Yahoo! close down search engine Altavista

One of the oldest search engines on the internet which was introduced in 1995 has been shut down by Yahoo according to an announcement on its Tumblr page. The outdated search engine was shut down on Monday. Altavista came online before Google (which came online in 1998) but lost the search battle to Google in the early 2000s.

It became the first search engine to index about 20 million web pages and launched as www.altavista.digital.com. It attained about 80 million daily hits back then.

Altavista was acquired by Yahoo when Overture Services Inc was bought for $1.7bn in July 2003, and Overture had acquired altavista earlier that year from Massachusetts-based CMGI Inc. Altavista tried to diversify by having other services apart from search like Yahoo and this contributed to its downfall.

Today most users in the U. S. use Google for their search enquiries while Microsoft’s Bing comes second, and Yahoo comes third for search according to ComScore. “Please visit Yahoo Search for all your searching needs.” Yahoo said in the post.

Alongside altavista were also the order site kozmo.com and the butler from Ask Jeeves which were buried in the mass burial as the company was said to have terminated eight of its services.

Search expert David Sullivan had a eulogy for altavista and compared it to a bright child neglected by its parents.

“You were loved. You really were. People did not want to leave you. But despite adding new features, some of which Google copied, you couldn’t keep up with the pace and innovation of that company, which decided against becoming a portal like your corporate masters ordered for you,”he posted on his blog.

“You deserved from Yahoo, itself one of the old-time brands of the web, to have more attention paid to your role.” He said.

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