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Encyclopedia > AltaVista

The name AltaVista refers both to an Internet search engine company and to that company’s search engine product. A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. ... The term company may refer to a separate legal entity, as in English law, or may simply refer to a business, as is the common use in the United States. ... A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. ...

Contents

Birth

AltaVista logo in days of biggest success.
AltaVista logo in days of biggest success.

AltaVista was started by Digital Equipment Corporation by employee volunteers who were trying to provide services to make finding files on the public network easier.[citation needed] The idea of applying the algorithm to the internet was born during a lunch conversation between the two main engineers. The name AltaVista was chosen in relation to the surroundings of their company at Palo Alto. AltaVista was publicly launched as an internet search engine on 15 December 1995 at http://altavista.digital.com.[1][2] Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... The DEC logo Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering American company in the computer industry. ... is the 349th day of the year (350th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full 1995 Gregorian calendar). ...


At launch, the service had two innovations which set it ahead of the other search engines. It used a fast, multi-threaded crawler (Scooter) which could cover a lot more Web pages than were believed to exist and an efficient search back-end running on advanced hardware. As of 1998, it used 20 multi-processor machines using DEC’s Alpha processor. Each machine had 130 GB of RAM, 500 GB of hard disk space and received 13 million queries per day.[3] This made AltaVista the first searchable, full-text database of a large part of the World Wide Web. The distinguishing feature of AltaVista was its minimalistic interface compared with other search engines of the time; a feature which was lost when it became a portal, but was regained when it refocused its efforts on its search function. Parallel computing is the simultaneous execution of the same task (split up and specially adapted) on multiple processors in order to obtain faster results. ... DEC Alpha AXP 21064 Microprocessor die photo Package for DEC Alpha AXP 21064 Microprocessor Alpha AXP 21064 bare die mounted on a business card with some statistics The DEC Alpha, also known as the Alpha AXP, is a 64-bit RISC microprocessor originally developed and fabricated by Digital Equipment Corp... RAM redirects here. ... Typical hard drives of the mid-1990s. ... This article is about computing. ... WWWs historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. ...


Business Transactions

AltaVista in its “portal” time, 1999.
AltaVista in its “portal” time, 1999.

In 1996, AltaVista became the exclusive provider of search results for Yahoo!. In 1998, Digital was sold to Compaq and in 1999, Compaq relaunched AltaVista as a web portal, hoping to compete with Yahoo!. Under CEO Rod Schrock, AltaVista abandoned its streamlined search page and focused on features like shopping and free email.[4] In June of the same year, Compaq paid AltaVista Technology Incorporated (“ATI”) US$ 3.3 million for the domain name altavista.com — Jack Marshall, cofounder of ATI, had registered the name in 1994. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Compaq Computer Corporation is an American personal computer company founded in 1982, and now a brand name of Hewlett-Packard. ... For information regarding portals on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Portal. ... Yahoo redirects here. ... The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. ... The term domain name has multiple related meanings: A name that identifies a computer or computers on the internet. ...


In June of 1999, Compaq sold a majority stake in AltaVista to CMGI, an internet investment company.[5] CMGI filed for an initial public offering for AltaVista to take place in April 2000, but as the internet bubble collapsed, the IPO was cancelled.[6] Meanwhile, it became clear that AltaVista’s portal strategy was unsuccessful, and the search service began losing market share, especially to Google. After a series of layoffs and several management changes, AltaVista gradually shed its portal features and refocused on search. By 2002, AltaVista had improved the quality and freshness of its results and redesigned its user interface.[7] CMGI Inc. ... The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2001 during which stock markets in Western nations saw their value increase rapidly from growth in the new Internet sector and related fields. ... This article is about the corporation. ...


In February 2003, AltaVista was bought by Overture Services, Inc.[8] In October 2003, Overture itself was taken over by Yahoo!. In Aug. 2004, shortly after Yahoo!’s acquisition, the AltaVista site started using the Yahoo! Search technology. Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture Services, Inc. ... Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Yahoo redirects here. ... This article is about the search engine. ...


Free services

AltaVista provides a free translation service, branded Babel Fish, which automatically translates text between several world languages. // Babel Fish is a web-based application developed by AltaVista (now part of Yahoo!) which machine translates text or web pages from one of several languages into another. ...


See also

This is a list of search engines. ...

References

  1. ^ Lewis, Peter H. (1995-12-18), "Digital Equipment Offers Web Browsers Its ‘Super Spider’", The New York Times: Late Edition - Final, Section D, Page 4, Column 3, <http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60B14FF3F5D0C7B8DDDAB0994DD494D81>
  2. ^ Digital Press and Analysts News (1995-12-15). "Digital Develops Internet’s First ‘Super Spider’". biz.digital.announce. (Google Groups). Retrieved on 2007-02-26.
  3. ^ Ricardo Baeza-Yates and Berthier Ribeiro-Neto (1999). Modern Information Retrieval. Addison-Wesley/ACM Press, pp. 374, 390.
  4. ^ Kopytoff, Verne (2000-03-27), "AltaVista Switches Web Portal Into High Gear", San Francisco Chronicle: C-1, <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/03/27/BU90210.DTL&hw=altavista&sn=001&sc=1000>
  5. ^ Afzali, Cyrus (1999-06-29), "CMGI Acquires 83 Percent of AltaVista for $2.3 Billion", internet.com, <http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/147101>
  6. ^ Barnes, Cecily (2001-01-10), "AltaVista cancels proposed IPO", news.com, <http://www.news.com/2100-1023-250836.html>
  7. ^ Glasner, Joanna (2002-11-13), "AltaVista Makeover: A Better View", Wired, <http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2002/11/56335>
  8. ^ Hansell, Saul (2003-02-19), "Overture Services to Buy AltaVista for $140 Million", The New York Times, <http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9403E5DF173DF93AA25751C0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink>

Year 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full 1995 Gregorian calendar). ... is the 352nd day of the year (353rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full 1995 Gregorian calendar). ... is the 349th day of the year (350th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 57th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full 2000 Gregorian calendar). ... is the 86th day of the year (87th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about the year. ... is the 180th day of the year (181st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... is the 10th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Also see: 2002 (number). ... is the 317th day of the year (318th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... [[Media:Italic text]]{| style=float:right; |- | |- | |} is the 50th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

  • AltaVista
  • Babel Fish
  • Timeline

  Results from FactBites:
 
AltaVista - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (327 words)
Launched on December 15, 1995 at http://altavista.digital.com AltaVista was misunderstood by its parent company.
In February 2003, AltaVista was bought by Overture Services, Inc. The failed attempt at a "portal" was dropped and the website was again revamped to provide simple search functions.
AltaVista was also one of the numerous websites which promised "free email for life", only to subsequently reverse this policy by charging a subscription fee for its email services.
  More results at FactBites »


 
 

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