Altavista Search Engine Drops The Curtain
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Known to be one of the first, if not the first real search engine, Altavista has had it’s curtains drawn to a close for the final time by it’s owner, Yahoo. Since 1995 Altavista has been diligently providing its users with the answers to millions of search queries. But with the big boys like Google and Bing, you have to think, was there really a place for Altavista on the web any more?
Launched in 1995, Altavista quickly became one of the most popular search engines among the early days of the internet. And over the years, it’s reputation grew to the point of reaching heights never before achieved by a web service at the time. This was without counting on the work of two experienced engineers, who, three years later, Google embraced. And that was the beginning of the problems for Altavista. The search engine passed from hand to hand and its IPO falls overboard during the bursting of the Internet bubble in 2000.
Different strategies to transform it into a portal were set out up and implemented, but none of them really succeed. In 2004, Yahoo acquired it, but no real change has occurred, which led the site to be kept alive by life support. After 18 years of loyal service, the Altavista search engine will be officially closed on 8 July by Yahoo.
So from all of the people who grew up in the early days of the internet, RefuGeeks would like to bid farewell to one of the original game changers of the web. Goodbye Altavista.
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Bob