One of the web’s first news search engines turns a quarter century old. It launched to help people find the news as it happened, and it is still doing that job.
In October 2000, most people found news by typing a newspaper’s address into their browser. Rocketinfo Inc. took a different approach and launched RocketNews, one of the first search engines built just for current news. You typed in a topic and got the latest stories from across the web, not a page of month-old links.
The idea got noticed. Search Engine Watch gave RocketNews an honorable mention for Best News Search Engine in 2003 and 2004. In 2004 it was nominated for a Webby Award for Best Internet News Site. RocketNews also adopted RSS and Atom feeds early, back when getting news from feeds was still a new idea.
In 2008 Murray Owen LLC took over RocketNews and has run it ever since. The name became a U.S. registered trademark, ROCKETNEWS®, in 2017.
In 2026 RocketNews was rebuilt for a new era: an ad-free news aggregator covering 17 categories, with AI-assisted summaries that link straight back to the original reporting. The tools changed, but the job is the one it started with in 2000, finding the news fast.
What comes next
Twenty-five years is a long run for any name on the web. As RocketNews starts its next chapter, we’re open to talking with a company or publisher that wants to carry the name forward, whether in news, media, space or anywhere a great name matters.