AltaVista was a search engine created in 1995 by a group of researchers attempting to make finding files on a public network easier. Despite its obvious power, AltaVista fell into disuse like many similar (but arguably inferior) services including Infoseek, AOL Search, Excite, and Ask Jeeves. The advent of Google as market leader helped make AltaVista much less relevant, thus making it fall in disuse among consumers.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1995 | AltaVista, a powerful search engine, is created by researchers at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) to improve file search on the internet. |
| 1996 | AltaVista begins providing search results for queries performed on the Yahoo website, marking the start of a partnership between the two platforms. |
| 1998 | Compaq acquires Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), including AltaVista, for $9.6 billion, intending to leverage AltaVista’s technology for e-commerce and internet strategies. |
| 1999 | Struggling to make AltaVista profitable, Compaq sells an 83% stake to CMGI, owner of the Lycos search engine. |
| 2003 | AltaVista is sold to Overture Services, Inc. for $140 million, with hopes to regain market share from emerging competitors like Google. |
| 2003 | Overture Services, Inc. is acquired by Yahoo, leading to the integration of AltaVista’s technology into the Yahoo search platform. |
| 2013 | Yahoo officially retires AltaVista as a standalone search engine, marking the end of its existence and rendering it irrelevant in the evolving landscape of internet search. |
| Aspect | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Founding and Early Success | AltaVista was created by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), one of the leading computer companies of the time. It was developed by a team led by Paul Flaherty and Louis Monier and was launched in December 1995. AltaVista quickly gained popularity due to its powerful search capabilities and fast search results, becoming one of the most popular search engines in the early days of the internet. It was known for its simple and efficient interface. |
| Acquisition by Compaq | In 1998, Compaq acquired Digital Equipment Corporation, including its AltaVista subsidiary, in a deal worth approximately $9.6 billion. Compaq intended to leverage AltaVista’s technology for its e-commerce and internet strategies. Under Compaq’s ownership, AltaVista continued to operate as a search engine, but it faced increasing competition from other search engines like Google. |
| Decline and Sale to Overture Services | AltaVista’s popularity declined as it faced tough competition from emerging search engines, especially Google, which was gaining momentum due to its superior search algorithms and relevancy ranking. In 2003, Compaq sold AltaVista to Overture Services, Inc. (formerly known as GoTo.com) for a reported $140 million. Overture primarily focused on paid search advertising. |
| Transfer to Yahoo! and Shutdown | In 2003, Yahoo! acquired Overture Services, including AltaVista, as part of its strategy to expand its search capabilities. However, AltaVista’s search engine had lost much of its earlier prominence, and Yahoo! shifted its focus to its own search technology. As a result, AltaVista ceased to be a standalone search engine, and its brand gradually faded away. In 2013, Yahoo! officially shut down AltaVista. |
| Legacy and Impact | While AltaVista may not be widely remembered today, it played a pivotal role in the early days of the internet. It was among the first search engines to offer full-text search capabilities and served as a precursor to more advanced search engines that followed. Although AltaVista is no longer operational, it contributed to the evolution of web search and the development of more sophisticated search algorithms. Its legacy lives on in the history of the internet and search engines. |
Background
AltaVista was a search engine created in 1995 by a group of researchers attempting to make finding files on a public network easier.
It had two distinct advantages over other search engines of the time. For one, it utilized a fast, multi-threaded crawler that could cover many more web pages than were believed to exist on the internet in the 90s. AltaVista also employed an efficient back-end search running on advanced hardware.
It’s important to note that AltaVista was not created to win over consumers or tap into a commercial market to make a profit.
The project was essentially a test case for a supercomputer with a 64-bit processor and 130 GB of RAM that could search large databases quickly.
Despite its obvious power, AltaVista fell into disuse like many similar (but arguably inferior) services including Infoseek, AOL Search, Excite, and Ask Jeeves.
What caused its demise?
Yahoo partnership and sale to Compaq
In 1996, AltaVista began providing search results for search queries performed on the Yahoo website.
The partnership with Yahoo was not inherently bad for AltaVista, but it did precipitate a series of events that would cause the search engine to fall out of favor.
Two years later, Compaq acquired Digital Equipment (DEC) – the owner of AltaVista – for $9.6 billion.
Compaq was less interested in the hardware powering AltaVista and more interested in trying to beat Yahoo at its own game.
To that end, Compaq turned the search engine into a complex web portal by removing the simple interface users had grown accustomed to. Over time, the homepage became increasingly cluttered.
To beat Yahoo, Compaq had made AltaVista more like its competitors and thus eroded its point of difference.
During this time, some users switched to a new kid on the search engine: Google.
CMGI and Overture acquisitions
Struggling to make AltaVista profitable, Compaq sold an 83% stake to the owner of the Lycos search engine CMGI in 1999.
However, a failed IPO meant staff were made redundant at CMGI as it too struggled to make money from AltaVista.
In an attempt to claw back market share from Google, the search engine belatedly reverted to a simple search form.
AltaVista was then sold to Overture in 2003 for $140 million, itself acquired by Yahoo four months later.
The acquisition by Yahoo marked the beginning of the end for AltaVista, with its once-mighty search technology absorbed into the Yahoo platform.
Ultimately, Altavista became irrelevant as soon as it became disconnected from the domain name it had grown from over a decade prior. Yahoo formally retired the search engine in 2013.
Key takeaways:
- Altavista was a pioneering search engine developed by a group of Digital Equipment (DEC) researchers. It was originally created to showcase the power of a then-revolutionary DEC supercomputer.
- After an ominous partnership with Yahoo in 1996, AltaVista underwent a series of acquisitions and format charges as several companies tried to make it profitable. In the process, the search engine lost market share to up-and-comer Google.
- Yahoo acquired AltaVista in 2003 and absorbed the technology behind the search engine into its own platform. AltaVista was formally put to rest ten years later.
Quick Timeline
- AltaVista was a powerful search engine created in 1995 by researchers to make finding files on the internet easier. It utilized a fast crawler and advanced hardware for efficient search.
- Despite its initial advantages, AltaVista fell into disuse like many other search engines, including Infoseek, AOL Search, Excite, and Ask Jeeves.
- A partnership with Yahoo in 1996 and subsequent acquisition by Compaq led to changes that made AltaVista more like its competitors, eroding its uniqueness.
- AltaVista struggled to become profitable and underwent a series of acquisitions, including being sold to CMGI and then Overture.
- Yahoo’s acquisition of AltaVista marked the beginning of its decline, as the once-mighty search technology was absorbed into the Yahoo platform.
- AltaVista lost market share to Google, which offered a simpler and more effective search experience.
- Yahoo formally retired AltaVista in 2013, rendering it irrelevant and ending its existence as a standalone search engine.
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