I just started reading a book called, "The Search" by John Battelle. In one of the early chapter titled, "Search before Google", John spent half of the chapter talking about the rise and fall of the once popular search site - AltaVista.
It is a truly amazing story - started as a research project to demonstrate the processing power of DEC's Alpha processor, becoming the most popular search site and then slowly having faded away from our memories. This is one company that had a chance to become what google is today.
I always thought that I kept good track of what happened to web companies, but I didn't know that AltaVista was sold twice after Compaq taking control of the website. I actually would bet that there are not many people that know who owns AltaVista today -- it is owned by Yahoo!
At the peak of it's sucess, it was first sold to Compaq as part of DEC ($9.6B total value). Unfortunately, once again, AltaVista was run by a hardware company and they had no clue. In 1999, after the founder Louis Monier finally left the company, AltaVista was again sold to CMGI for $2.3B. Although CMGI invested a lot of money for a massive PR campaign and even filed for IPO, the ill-fated AltaVista now had to face a bigger downfall - the Internet bubble had burst just before their planned IPO. It was then sold to Overture in 2003 at $140M, which was, as we all know, eventually sold to Yahoo!
I thought it would be fun to take a look at the Internet Archive's "WayBack Machine" to see how AltaVista has changed over the years:
1996~1997
Who knew this would be a big thing years later? It has a simple search box, but the bottom part is cluttered with marketing messages for their hardware and software products.
1998
They got rid of the marketing message and now it is a search site in it's purest form. I didn't know they were the first to implement the 'simple is beautiful' philosophy, ahead of google.
1999
After Compaq acquires AltaVista, they decide to make it a 'portal' to compete with Excite and Yahoo! Only if they stayed as a pure search play...
2000
Now it's a full blown portal. I can even see 'comparison shop'. Mp3/Audio search is added also. Look at the new logo - makes me wonder why they wanted to change a successful brand image?
2001
The mountain is back! I guess CMGI realized that they need the vista to be altavista...
2003
New (and current) logo. I'm guessing this is Overture's effort to change the corporate and brand image. They also realized that they should focus on search and search only.
2006
Today, it is even simpler than google. I did some quick searches and I don't think google's better than altavista. It focuses on keyword, image and mp3 files search. Other links points to Overture and Yahoo pages.
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