Secrets of the Internet Search Engines

AltaVista has a long and storied history.
It all started back in 1995, when AltaVista debuted as the first full-text Internet
search engine. The AltaVista search engine was created as a research product
within the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) research lab, and AltaVista
remained a DEC subsidiary until 1999, when it was spun off into a private company
controlled by Internet venture firm CMGI. AltaVista barely weathered the
dot-com implosion, and in early 2003 the company was purchased by Overture,
which supplies its own paid results to other search sites. At about the same
time, Overture also purchased the AllTheWeb search engine from FAST. Then,
later in 2003, Overture itself was purchased by Yahoo!. So now Yahoo! owns
AltaVista (and AllTheWeb—and, via another purchase, Inktomi)—even though
it doesn’t use AltaVista results on its own site.
During the dot-com boom, AltaVista attempted to join the portal bandwagon,
and added a variety of portal-like content and features to the main AltaVista
search index. This attempt at diversification was unsuccessful, and following
the dot-com bust, AltaVista returned to its more modest, dedicated search index
engine roots. Unfortunately, during its period of portal envy, AltaVista lost its
luster as a search engine and was surpassed in both quality and quantity of
results by dedicated search engines such as Google and AllTheWeb.
Today, even though it’s not as big as Google or AllTheWeb, AltaVista
(www.altavista.com) does offer more powerful search tools, as well as some
truly useful type-specific searches, such as its MP3 and video searches