Hasta la vista to Alta Vista. (somebody had to say it)
Ah, AltaVista, that sure brings back memories....
I wondered who was running Altavista.
Back in the mid-1990s (seems so long ago), Alta Vista spent considerable time servicing as my default search engine. I haven't even thought about it for years and was shocked to find out it was still in operation.
It is amazing how quickly Google took over online search and now Google is probably the most powerful corporation in the entire world (information = power), though many people don't realize it yet.
Google is what some science fiction writers warned us about back in the 20th century. Google is quickly becoming an all-knowing "god-like" entity and the source of nearly all information.
In fact, so convinced am I of Google's power that as soon as I hit the POST button on this reply, I'm bound to see web advertisements for aluminum foil and for books on paranoia (free shipping if I act now!)
The internet was pretty cool, when it first went GUI (graphic user interface).
For example there was a whole lot of amateur genealogy information. No cost, and good people to work with.
People that had specialized books would scan relevant pages, and send it to you.
Since then, it has become more and more “commercialized.”
Instead of 100s of people, Ancestry.com took over for the most part.
I now use ixquick as they do not collect personal data.
yet another piece of the old Digital Equipment Corp fades away...
AltaVista was useful for research because when you searched for a company or organization, that entity’s own website would come up first—the most reliable for checking the name.
Infoseek was ok for its time 1994.
The spirit of the web is on life support today. Now it’s all marketing.
Screw it.
Hail and farewell Altavista. Dr Darrel Thurmond was the chief developer and held doctorates in Theology, Linguistics and Computer Science. Graduated from MIT at 18 and suffered from Diabetes. He spoke 5 languages including Swahili and could solve calculus equations in his head but couldn’t win a game of tic-tac-toe.
altavista was pretty good back in the day. IIRC, they also invented the babelfish.
I used to use it. It was the best ... in its day.
I used to be used to using Nymphoseek.