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)
http://www.resourceshelf.com/2002/09/29/a-look-back-as-google-celebrates-birthday/

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.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060101090916/http://resourceshelf.freepint.com/archives/2001_12_01_resourceshelf_archive.html