AltaVista is Still Around, But Only For Another Week

Did you know that AltaVista is still around and still receives about 1 million visitors a month? Currently owned by Yahoo, AltaVista will be shut down on July 8th. AltaVista hasn’t really been anything more than a brand for the last few years as the search results use Yahoo. It’s crazy to think that in 1996, Yahoo was actually using AltaVista for its search results.

AltaVista was the first search engine I can remember ever using. Even after Google emerged, I would use AltaVista to translate with Babel Fish, search music files and images. I was never into the “web portal” scene being crammed down my throat and I think that was one of the big reasons I migrated over to Google. Google was also the search engine that people “in the know” would use. People would be amazed when you used Google, either because they never saw it or they thought they were the only ones using it.

If you are looking to take a trip down memory lane you should head on over to the Wayback Machine to see what it looked like over the years. AltaVista will always have a special place in my heart, *tear* but life goes on. What was the other popular search engine that everyone also used back in the late ’90s? Ask Jeeves!