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gofromhere.com may only have been launched in 2004, but the roots of the site go back to 1997, when gofromhere.com's creator & webmaster, Simon Jones, crafted a similar website as his personal home page.

IN THE BEGINING

Simon JonesSimon noticed that people found it difficult to remember the different addresses for the various different search engines available at the time. "Some of them had cumbersome addresses, like AltaVista which used to be www.altavista.digital.com," Recalls Jones, "That address would be difficult to remember even in today's internet savvy culture."

And so in early 1997 Surf Searcher was born. The simple but effective site took its place on Simon's personal website and provided a search box to most of the major search engines of the time.

Simon JonesIn 1998 Simon updated the design of his personal home page and expanded the functionality of the now already popular Surf Searcher. Users of the site could now search various book and music retailers websites, as well as get maps, find zip codes and search the phone book. With the new features came a new name, the site was now called Surf Searcher Pro.

At this time Simon began to see the fruits of his efforts in the form of payments from affiliates and advertising on the site. The search engines themselves were even paying for each individual search that people were making using the shortcuts provided by Surf Searcher.

Surf Searcher eventually broke its ties with Simon's personal homepage in early 2000 when the site took up residence within its own domain name, surfsearcher.net.

Simon JonesThe site was massively extended to include regional variations for the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This had a dramatic effect on the sites international popularity. However, as advertising and affiliate revenue shrank due to difficulties across the entire internet industry, the regional variations of the site were scaled back in late 2001.

Surf Searcher (or surfsearcher.net as it was now known) remained largely unchanged from 2001 to 2004. The site was bookmarked by millions of people from all over the world, and this fact alone made it valuable enough for two takeover bids.

The first, in late 2003, was unsuccessful. However in the spring on 2004, after seven years, Simon accepted an offer made by a multinational credit card company to buy the site and its primary domain name.

"Selling surfsearcher was a kind of a bitter sweet moment," Reports Jones, "I had spent years developing the site, and building a solid user-base so it seemed a little strange to give it."

Jones admits the sale won't go down in internet history. The site, as popular as it was, was not a 'big name' and the figures involved in its change of ownership were not about to set any pulses racing on Wall St.

"It didn't make me an internet millionaire, not by the furthest stretch of the imagination, but it did buy me a pretty cool sports car I'd always wanted, so surfsearcher and I parted on very good terms in the end."

 

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