111–120 of 323 posts
This article misses one of the primary reasons for AV's demise -- we didn't update our primary index for several months just as Google was gaining mindshare. A ridiculously high percentage of our front page links were 404s, while Google was always fresh. This was particularly bad because one of our earlier strong points was fresh indexes. Our ability to refresh the supplementary index on the fly was awesome. When you…
"...AltaVista was essentially a test case for one of Digital’s supercomputers, the AlphaServer 8400 TurboLaser." I loved the seeming technical excesses of Digital so much. Nothing they did seemed as calm and staid as Cray, Sun or even SGI. Think about that name - Alpha Server 8400 Turbo Laser
This article misses one of the primary reasons for AV's demise -- we didn't update our primary index for several months just as Google was gaining mindshare. A ridiculously high percentage of our front page links were 404s, while Google was always fresh. This was particularly bad because one of our earlier strong points was fresh indexes. Our ability to refresh the supplementary index on the fly was awesome. When you…
And what was his first company?
Altavista were also the first ones doing online translation. babelfish.altavista.com, anyone remember that? The Babelfish being Douglas Adams' fictional fish that you stuck in your ear to use as a universal translator. there was also a fake domain called alta-vista.com that was very much of the goatse variety.
The I saw “Google” loaded on another computer and decided to try it out. The difference in quality was overwhelming, in that first session it made me smile and made an instant convert out of me.
Another difference is that Google did not have any ads initially, and when they finally added ads, they were clearly highlighting them as ads, instead of masking them as regular search results. And overall their interface was really clean compared with their competition.
I don’t know if it was my search patterns, maybe other people had a different experience, but the difference was night and day.
Even today, I may whine and moan about Google, but their Search is still the best and I’m saying this as a DuckDuckGo user.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of those "Google is the new AOL" moments hit me when I heard a commercial for Google on the radio recently. Specifically, it was someone explaining that they had a feature built especially for veterans to find jobs relevant to them, and that you could get to it by typing "jobs for veterans" into Google search. It just sounded so much like the old AOL Keyword feature, which a lot of people forgot about, but was li…
Interestingly, that was the idea I distinctly remember from the dinner party: someone suggested the only fix for Internet searches was to implement something like AOL Keywords globally. A central registry of keywords.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly, that was the idea I distinctly remember from the dinner party: someone suggested the only fix for Internet searches was to implement something like AOL Keywords globally. A central registry of keywords.
What would you be trying to "fix" here? More often than not, the first result for a given query on most common search engines is the correct, authoritative source for something. If I search for a company, the company's official website is nearly always the first real result. The only thing I think is really wrong with search (and all major search engines right now are guilty of this) is making paid ads look very simi…
This article misses one of the primary reasons for AV's demise -- we didn't update our primary index for several months just as Google was gaining mindshare. A ridiculously high percentage of our front page links were 404s, while Google was always fresh. This was particularly bad because one of our earlier strong points was fresh indexes. Our ability to refresh the supplementary index on the fly was awesome. When you…
I feel that Google brought in a shift in thinking of internet companies. In pre-google era, companies operated like an government office, once they gain marked foot hold they virtually stop enhancing their products. Google and other successful startups have taught us that a tech company is prone to fall if it doesn't innovate.