AltaVista to close on July 8

[Orphia Nay]

AltaVista will be ancient history on July 8.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57591629-93/a-hail-and-farewell-to-altavista/

It was the first search engine I ever used (in 1996). But I haven't used it in at least 13 years.

Here's the link for old times' sake:

http://www.altavista.com/

 

[SezMe]

Me too - I lost my search virginity on AltaVista.

No, there are no pictures.

 

[Belz...]

Good riddance. I hated the internet back then (1998) because you couldn't find anything with search engines unless you were really, really patient.

 

[aggle-rithm]

It wasn't ALREADY ancient history?

I haven't used it, or even seen it, since the 90's.

 

[WildCat]

AltaVista used to be my favorite search engine in 1995 and 1996... I had no idea it was still around!

 

[Morrigan]

That thing still exists? Wow. Good riddance.

 

[gnome]

I really liked altavista because it was the one I knew could handle a phrase search instead of a keyword search. I'm not in fact sure what it was that let me to use Google all the time instead.

Maybe because using Google I found myself not needing to cross-check metacrawler.com as well?

 

[NoahFence]

Lycos FTW!

 

[BenBurch]

Savvysearch. Anybody recall that? It was a search engine that called multiple other search engines and digested the results for you.

 

[AgeGap]

Used BabelFish and Google translate did so as well.

 

[Madalch]

I had forgotten what AltaVista was. I remember Hotbot, though.

 

[BazBear]

I haven't used it in about 13 years either, and I assumed it went out of biz long ago. Looking under the search field, I see that Yahoo must have bought it out at some point. ETA- Yahoo bought it in 2003, and it's been using Yahoo's search engine ever since.

 

[Mister Earl]

"Dad, what was AltaVista?"
"Google it, son."

 

[Frozenwolf150]

I remember AltaVista, as well as Infoseek, and the all-in-one at the time known as Metacrawler. However, I soon moved to Yahoo search, and ultimately Google.

 

[commandlinegamer]

At least we still have Excite.

 

[Ian Osborne]

I had forgotten what AltaVista was. I remember Hotbot, though.

Yes, me too. HotBot was the first search engine I remember using, though IIRC, I switched to it from something else. Can't remember what.

 

[Ian Osborne]

I remember AltaVista, as well as Infoseek, and the all-in-one at the time known as Metacrawler. However, I soon moved to Yahoo search, and ultimately Google.

Ah, MetaCrawler. That's another tool I used in the Nineties, and didn't realise still existed.

 

[Rairun]

I really liked altavista because it was the one I knew could handle a phrase search instead of a keyword search. I'm not in fact sure what it was that let me to use Google all the time instead.

Yep, exactly. I used Yahoo and Cadê (in Portuguese) for keyword searches, and AltaVista for phrase searches. I only switched to google because their spiders were A LOT more efficient - you felt like you could find anything on the internet with it. I remember being amazed I could search for my name and find all kinds of stuff about me (university entrance results, etc).

 

[Tiktaalik]

Savvysearch. Anybody recall that? It was a search engine that called multiple other search engines and digested the results for you.

Dogpile still does that.

 

[DuvalHMFIC]

I think my first go-to search engine was Webcrawler in the mid-nineties. I occasionally remember using alta vista as well. Soon enough made the move to Yahoo, and eventually to Google.

A couple of friends were talking the other day about this push by Bing to get Google users. One of them had it right, I think. They said "even if Bing is better, it's over man. It's too late. Google is an adjective for crying out loud. 'I'm going to Bing it' just doesn't sound the same. It's over."