Yahoo buries its Alta Vista child

Once up on a time, there was a popular search engine called AltaVista. It lives no more. On July 8, its owner Yahoo sent AltaVista.com to the internet graveyard to rest alongside order-almost-anything venture Kozmo.com and the butler from Ask Jeeves. Palo Alto, California-based AltaVista was introduced in 1995, three years before Googlewas founded. Eclipsed by Google in the early 2000s, AltaVista's star had already faded by the time Yahoo acquired it as part of its $1.7 billion purchase of Overture Services in July 2003. Overture had bought AltaVista earlier that year from Massachusetts-based CMGI. Yahoo announced AltaVista's fate on its Tumblr page late last month. Search industry expert Danny Sullivan likened AltaVista to a bright child neglected by its parents. "You were loved. You really were," Sullivan wrote in a blog post eulogizing the site. "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."Indeed, AltaVista's decline began after it expanded to become more like Yahoo, offering a bevy of online services instead of sticking solely with search. By the time the site reversed course, it was too late. Its finances were sinking and Google was on the rise.  Yahoo's June 28 announcement of AltaVista's end is brief. It's buried as the eighth item on a list of other services the company is shutting down. Along with the mention of AltaVista's July 8 expiration date, the post says only: "Please visit Yahoo Search for all of your searching needs." According to data from online research firm comScore, most people in the US use Google for their search needs, followed by Microsoft's Bing. Yahoo is in third place. If you were on the Internet in the late 1990's and wanted to search for something, there's a good chance you'd head over to AltaVista. The name alone might have you reminiscing about the early days of the World Wide Web. But now after 18 years, the pioneering search engine is just a memory Created by researchers at Digital Equipment Corporation, a computer vendor that was later acquired by Compaq, AltaVista was actually quite revolutionary when it launched. It was speedier than competitors at the time, covered more of the Web, had an advanced back-end system, and a minimalistic user interface that brings to mind the biggest search engine of today. In its heyday back in 1997, AltaVista received more than 80 million hits per day. Throughout its existence, AltaVista changed hands several times, and was eventually sold in 2003 to search marketing firm Overture Services. That same year, Yahoo swooped in and purchased Overture for $1.7 billion, effectively nabbing AltaVista as well. Rumors about the shutdown date back to 2010, but Yahoo decided the keep the site alive for a few more years. The Web giant in June finally announced it would say goodbye to AltaVista this summer, along with a number of other unused services as part of the company's ongoing efforts under CEO Marissa Mayer to trim the fat.

Here is a brief timeline of AltaVista:
1994: Jack Marshall, cofounder of ATI, registered the name Altavista.com.
1995: AltaVista was created by researchers at Digital Equipment Corporation’s Network Systems Laboratory and Western Research Laboratory to easily find files on the public network. Paul Flaherty was responsible for the original idea, and Louis Monier wrote the crawler, and Michael Burrows wrote the indexer.
Dec, 15, 1995: AltaVista was launched as an internet search engine ataltavista.digital.com. Traffic reached 300,000 hits on the first day, reached 80 million hits per day two years later.
1996: AltaVista became the exclusive provider of search results for Yahoo!.
1997: AltaVista’s service became popular and it earned $50 million in sponsorship.
1998: Digital, owner of AltaVista, was sold to Compaq for $3.3 million.
June 1999: Compaq sold a majority stake in AltaVista to CMGI, an internet investment company.
1999: Compaq redesigned AltaVista as a web portal to compete with Yahoo! and focused on shopping and free email.
Feb.2003: AltaVista was bought by Overture Services.
July 2003: Overture was taken over by Yahoo!.
Dec.2010: A Yahoo employee leaked PowerPoint slides indicating its closure.
May 2011: Shut down begins and all search results began to appear on a Yahoo! page.
June 28, 2013: Yahoo announced that AltaVista would be shut down.
July 8, 2013: Finally Shut down and visits to AltaVista’s home page are redirected to Yahoo!’s main page.