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bare bones lesson 18: Search Engine Graveyard

 

 

REST IN PEACE:

 

AlltheWeb, March 25, 2004

  • AlltheWeb originated in Norway. Launched in May 1999, it was first owned by a company called FAST and was also known by that name.  In 2003, it was purchased by Overture which was then purchased by Yahoo!.  In March 2004, AlltheWeb, as searchers had come to know it, ceased to exist.  Although AlltheWeb is still out there, it's not the same search engine.  Many of the advanced search features have disappeared.  Its database has been replaced with a version of the Yahoo! search engine database.  Actually, searching the same database at Yahoo! often brings more results than searching it at AlltheWeb.

AltaVista, March 31, 2004

  • AltaVista was developed by Digital Equipment Corporation in December 1995.  The first search engine to devise a way to store every word of every HTML page on the Internet in a fast, searchable index, it immediately became the search engine of choice.  Within a few years, however, it had morphed into a combination search engine/subject directory and lost its sharp search focus.  Recently, it returned to its origins, presenting a clean, unclutted interface with attractive colors.  Unfortunately, as another of Yahoo's acquisitions, it has suffered the same fate as AlltheWeb. It's still out there, but there have been many search feature changes, and the results are now basically the same as AlltheWeb.

Ask Jeeves / Teoma, February 2006

  • Ask Jeeves was founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, CA. It was originally designed to answer simple questions posed in everyday natural language. In practice, it was limited in what it could deliver and, in time, became overshadowed by more energetic systems that incorporated keyword searching techniques (like Google). In 2001, Ask Jeeves partnered with Teoma, a powerful keyword search engine developed by Apostolos Gerasoulis, a computer science professor at Rutgers University. But even this addition couldn't save it. On February 27, 2006, having suffered the loss of many of its users, Ask Jeeves was finally laid to rest. Similarly, on February 26, 2006, Teoma disappeared. It now redirects to the Ask.com search engine.

Other Dead Search Engines

  • Ask Jeeves
  • Deja.com
  • Direct Hit
  • Excite
  • Excite News
  • Go
  • Infoseek
  • InvisibleWeb.com
  • Flipper
  • iWon
  • Lycos
  • Magellan
  • MessageKing
  • NBCi (formerly Snap)
  • Northern Light
  • Openfind
  • Teoma
  • WebCrawler
  • WebTop

Some of these databases retain their names and may still be accessible on the Web; but their original indexes have been replaced by other database indexes, such as Yahoo! or Ask.com. For more information, go to Wikipedia on the Web .

Yahoo!                                                     Final Exam

[Table of Contents] [Search Engines] [Metasearchers] [Subject Directories] [Gateways & Databases] [Evaluating Web Pages] [Search Strategies] [Search Tips] [Boolean Operators] [Field Searching] [Troubleshooting] [Ask] [Clusty] [Dogpile] [GigaBlast] [Google] [MSN Search] [Yahoo!] [Graveyard] [Final Exam] [Beyond Bones] [User Agreement]

Last updated by E. Chamberlain,Thursday September 07, 2006