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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

#231

Post by reificator »

JadeNB wrote: post #196
reificator wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologize, it was intended as a joke to lighten the mood. It's never a good thing to lose one's job or have a company fail, even that long ago, so my response is to attempt humor.

> I apologize, it was intended as a joke to lighten the mood. It's never a good thing to lose one's job or have a company fail, even that long ago, so my response is to attempt humor. I see; I incorrectly read it as accusatory. Thanks for the very civil reply!

> I incorrectly read it as accusatory.

That's okay, I have a very dry sense of humor and straight-faced delivery in person as well. Which is unfortunate because it means I can't blame the lack of tone online when jokes don't land, they often don't in person either.

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

#232

Post by itp »

reaperducer wrote: post #224
mda wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any examples? I find it hard to believe it is "nearly useless for most searched topics". It is easy to check, go to your search history and look at your last 10-20 queries and count how many them useless.

Today I searched for TPUG, which is the Toronto PET Users Group. Google returned exactly ZERO results about TPUG. All of the results were about dogs.

I just searched for TPUG on Google in both my logged in profile, as well as an incognito window. Both searches returned primarily results about the Toronto PET Users Group, including a knowledge panel specifically about the Toronto PET Users Group (founded in 1978 by Lyman Duggan).

That's either very quick turnaround to fix, or a deeper mystery!

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

#233

Post by showdead »

I remember getting a free polo shirt with the AltaVista logo embroidered on it. I don't recall the specific circumstances that led to being sent a shirt, and I wore holes in it so I no longer have it, but it really was superior to the alternatives before Google came along.

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

#234

Post by reaperducer »

itp wrote: post #232
reaperducer wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today I searched for TPUG, which is the Toronto PET Users Group. Google returned exactly ZERO results about TPUG. All of the results were about dogs.

I just searched for TPUG on Google in both my logged in profile, as well as an incognito window. Both searches returned primarily results about the Toronto PET Users Group, including a knowledge panel specifically about the Toronto PET Users Group (founded in 1978 by Lyman Duggan). That's either very quick turnaround to fix, or a deeper mystery!

No mystery at all. Google tailors the results to what it thinks you want, rather than what you asked for.

Two people sitting at machines next to each other can perform the same search and get different results. It's what Google's spent billions of dollars on.

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

#235

Post by CommieBobDole »

INTPenis wrote: post #181
BryantD wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internal issues I'm not comfortable talking about in depth. It was a combination of technical problems and political problems; I expect any specific person's opinion of the percentage breakdown of those factors depends a lot on which group they were in at the time.

With your insight, could you say if AV had the same business plan as google? To gather data about people and shape services with it?

Not an insider, but I doubt it; this was the early commercial web, and business plans just weren't that sophisticated. People were building multi-million dollar companies on things that you could write in a long lunch hour today.

Honestly, I doubt that was even Google's plan for the first years of its existence. It was more "Hey, we made this neat search thing, let's see if we can figure out a way to make money from it".

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

#236

Post by [deleted] »

scarface74 wrote: post #221
davesque wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do seem to recall AV getting flooded with spam --- porn spam to be exact. I remember myself and all the nerd kids in my high school computer lab would joke that you could search for something completely innocuous like "yarn" and always get back at least a couple of porn links. This of course was also at a time when "whitehouse.com" was a porn site.

It might have been funny if you were in school, but if you were at work that’s a different story.

[deleted]

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

#237

Post by mda »

reaperducer wrote: post #224
mda wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any examples? I find it hard to believe it is "nearly useless for most searched topics". It is easy to check, go to your search history and look at your last 10-20 queries and count how many them useless.

Today I searched for TPUG, which is the Toronto PET Users Group. Google returned exactly ZERO results about TPUG. All of the results were about dogs.

The very first answer is Toronto Pet users for me, even with special box and the works.

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

#238

Post by mda »

reaperducer wrote: post #234
itp wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just searched for TPUG on Google in both my logged in profile, as well as an incognito window. Both searches returned primarily results about the Toronto PET Users Group, including a knowledge panel specifically about the Toronto PET Users Group (founded in 1978 by Lyman Duggan). That's either very quick turnaround to fix, or a deeper mystery!

No mystery at all. Google tailors the results to what it thinks you want, rather than what you asked for. Two people sitting at machines next to each other can perform the same search and get different results. It's what Google's spent billions of dollars on.

I expect it to change results, it would be a terrible experience if it did not

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

#239

Post by petercooper »

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…

we didn't update our primary index for several months just as Google was gaining mindshare

I'm glad this has been mentioned. I noticed this at the time but never really knew if it was actually the case! Altavista had become somewhat annoying to use at the time and Google's relatively clean front page (although it was more than just a search box in the earliest days, but it was cleaner than AV's) meant it loaded quicker and sold me on both speed and that the results actually loaded.

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