In honor of Google's Birthday, these two posts might be of interest.

1) This post from 2002 has a bunch of early announcements and news. One post has Larry Page asking about java web robot (1996)
resourceshelf.com/2002/09/29/a ...

2) This post from 2001 has a collection of early search engine announcements from AltaVista, Infoseek, Excite, and many others.
To access the collection scroll to the December 15th entry.

web.archive.org/web/2006010109 ...