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Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

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Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#211

Post by BryantD »

jasode wrote: post #167
BryantD wrote: post #99

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…

>one of the primary reasons for AV's demise -- we didn't update our primary index for several months just as Google [...] I'd say that our failure to maintain a high quality index was directly caused by our loss of focus, Do you believe Google's strategic decision to use commodity computers and hard drives gave them any competitive advantage (cheaper cost, scaling, etc) compared to DEC Alpha servers? As an outsider,…

Nah. We weren't using that many servers. Today, that absolutely would make a difference. Back in the day we could run a top ten web site on well under 500 servers, and it's not like we were paying list price for Alphas anyhow.

Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#212

Post by anyfoo »

cpeterso wrote: post #166
BryantD wrote: post #99

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…

From the article: "[Alta Vista] broadened the use of boolean operators in search. Like some competing search engines, it supported AND, OR, and NOT." My recollection is that Alta Vista supported boolean operators, but defaulted to OR while Google defaulted to AND . So searching Alta Vista for something like "$CommonWord $UncommonWord" would return results with high-ranking pages for $CommonWord that drown out all the…

Although it's very much anecdotical, I, too, distinctly remember that Google defaulted to AND (unlike today, a very hard AND at the time), and that this made a noticeable difference in searching habits.

My theory on why this might matter even for people who knew how to use the operators is this: With OR as default, you would first try your query without operators, get page upon page of irrelevant results, and then start to narrow your query down. With AND as the default, you would type in the query, and if you only got a few irrelevant results, or often no results at all, you would try alternative terms instead.

It seems that progressing from no result to desired results by choosing alternative terms just makes more sense than having to wade through irrelevant stuff, and the default encourages one methodology over the other.

Today, it's very hard to make Google return no results at all. Not just because the amount of content grew to an unimaginable scale in the meantime, but also because Google has become way, way fuzzier in the way it interprets search terms, likely to better suit a larger and different audience. A lot of times today, I have to switch to "verbatim" mode first, at least for technical stuff.

Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#213

Post by BryantD »

jasode wrote: post #193
ddebernardy wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but I remember the early 2000s. Just spitballing here but IMO that made no difference whatsoever from a consumer's standpoint -- but it presumably did from an operational standpoint, given how Google introduced an actual business model to search. The only things that mattered to you as a consumer then was how good the results were, and how convenient it was to get them. Google had a clear edge by the end…

>but IMO that made no difference whatsoever from a consumer's standpoint. With cheaper techniques, the idea is that the "more capital efficient" way of indexing the ever-expanding web would in turn provide better results for an improved consumer experience. It's the old adage of "do more with less" . For example, see the old Danny Sullivan graphs[0] showing how Google's index was growing faster than AltaVista. Having…

True, but after the period I'm thinking of. By 2001 when the layoffs started hitting hard, Google already had a massive advantage.

Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#214

Post by pinebox »

siggen wrote: post #9

If I remember correctly, Altavista produced better results than Google back then, for me at least. However, Altavista took seconds to load the first page (on 56k) whereas Google's first page loaded almost immediately. I honestly didn't expect Google to have survived the dot-com bust back then. This was before they figured out online adword auctions.

This was my experience as well. I had a deep link to AltaVista's "advanced" search page which loaded plenty fast.

Between AV and InfoSeek (which I used the Netscape plugin to get a browser search bar for) I was seeing better results than Google until sometime in the mid-00's.

Sure if you wanted to skim the surface of what was available on a given topic or just wanted the most popular links, Google was fine in the 90's and early 00's; But if you were deep diving or wanted something more obscure you needed other search engines.

Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#215

Post by irrational »

DonHopkins wrote: post #148
drallison wrote: post #133

A few historical notes: Paul Flaherty (1964-2006) was a principal engineer at the the Digital Equipment Network Research Laboratory. Paul is credited with having the idea for Alta Vista, but I think that it was Andy Freeman's sudden flash of insight that led to Paul's development. Paul had been in Italy at a trade show; when he returned he talked with Brian Reid, who headed the Lab, about the need to find a demonstra…

They sure used a lot of electricity at DECWRL! https://milk.com/wall-o-shame/bucket.html

Wow! But talk about a story that ended too soon. I want to hear about repercussions for the restaurant!

Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#217

Post by dougb5 »

gojomo wrote: post #194

As I vaguely recall, from my own perceptions as web search was arriving: * There were a bunch of early "full-text"-ish search experiments, but Lycos best proved its immense value and potential first. * Then, AltaVista arrived with breadth & speed beyond what had previously been possible. Still, it required a bit of expertise to craft your queries. * Then, Excite burst ahead with a quality breakthrough. Something abou…

This is right on. To add some color from my memory as a Lycos employee, it felt that many of the early search engines dropped by the ball in their rush become "portals". There was this mass delusion that it was important to hold the user's attention as long as possible in order to serve more ads--to own or otherwise control the content that users ultimately ended up at. Web search itself was seen as a commodity. This didn't seem so obviously wrong at the time. The Web was so much smaller.

Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#218

Post by irrational »

steelframe wrote: post #108
siggen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear all we have now is anecdotal evidence. :-) In my case, it was a gradual conversion to Google from Altavista than something immediate. So, funny thing: Back then, if one search engine didn't have what you were looking for, you would try another. Now, if Google doesn't have what you are looking for, where do you go? Does it mean the answer does not exist on the Internet? Do you try Bing or Duck?

Duck is Bing. https://www.quora.com/How-is-the-Bing-API-used-by-DuckDuckGo There are effectively only two competitive search engines in the U.S. and European markets today. In those markets, Bing is the only market pressure keeping Google honest.

Did Duck Duck Go use Google previously? I thought when I first started using it years ago it was using google on the back end.

Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#219

Post by ddebernardy »

jasode wrote: post #193
ddebernardy wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but I remember the early 2000s. Just spitballing here but IMO that made no difference whatsoever from a consumer's standpoint -- but it presumably did from an operational standpoint, given how Google introduced an actual business model to search. The only things that mattered to you as a consumer then was how good the results were, and how convenient it was to get them. Google had a clear edge by the end…

>but IMO that made no difference whatsoever from a consumer's standpoint. With cheaper techniques, the idea is that the "more capital efficient" way of indexing the ever-expanding web would in turn provide better results for an improved consumer experience. It's the old adage of "do more with less" . For example, see the old Danny Sullivan graphs[0] showing how Google's index was growing faster than AltaVista. Having…

I'm not so sure it applied back then. Before Google, the core issue was to get a good result in the random garbage you were returned in search results. You'd use quotes and plus/minus or AND/OR operators, maybe strip out words like xxx and porn and warez, and hope for the best. Staleness was, frankly, of little concern if you got a few relevant results. That the AV index was stale was news to me before I read this thread, and I'm not sure I'd buy into the idea that it made much difference. Search engine toolbars made getting results more convenient. But the core of the problem then was getting any relevant results to begin with. For that, Google just rocked.

Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#220

Post by BryantD »

fishingisfun wrote: post #176
BryantD wrote: post #99

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…

interesting stuff. Where are most of you guys now a days? since you were involved with search

All over. I didn't stick in search; I wound up working in online games for a long time. David Henke, who ran engineering and operations as a whole for a while, went on to Yahoo and then LinkedIn. Barry Rubinson went to Transmeta -- remember them? David Bills is at AWS now. Mike Burrows, who was and is an incredible engineer, is being brilliant at Google. Etc.
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