Archy (software)

Archie was a pre-World Wide Web search engine for locating files stored on public anonymous FTP servers. Created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, Peter Deutsch, and Bill Heelan, then students at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, Archie periodically indexed the directory listings of numerous FTP servers, creating a searchable database.

Users could connect to an Archie server (typically via telnet or a dedicated Archie client) and search for files by name or a portion of a filename. Archie would then return a list of FTP servers containing files matching the search query. This allowed users to discover and download files that might otherwise be difficult to find.

Archie's key function was automating the process of searching through the vast and largely unorganized collection of files available on the early internet. It addressed the problem of resource discovery in a decentralized environment before the advent of more sophisticated search technologies.

The name "Archie" is derived from "archive" without the 'v'. While not an acronym, some playfully suggested it stood for "archive" without the "v".

Archie was a vital tool in the early days of the internet, but with the emergence of more advanced search engines like Gopher and later, the World Wide Web and its associated search engines (such as Yahoo! and Google), Archie gradually became obsolete. The project officially ended in the late 1990s.