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When I first saw Google I'd been using AltaVista almost exclusively because it allowed phrase searching and keyword exclusion. Google seemed primitive by compar
by ksangeelee 9y ago
When I first saw Google I'd been using AltaVista almost exclusively because it allowed phrase searching and keyword exclusion. Google seemed primitive by comparison.
However, it was light and fast at a time when most of my access was via 64k lines or dial-up. AltaVista had become increasingly cluttered with GIF advertising and 'portal' nonsense.
AltaVista became slow and cumbersome, while Google was fast and clean. For me, that was AltaVista's downfall.
- cmrdporcupine 9y agoYes, this. While I appreciated Google's relevancy for search it didn't blow me away that much -- the real special sauce that early-Google had was the extremely lightweight search page. At a time when Altavista, lycos, Yahoo, etc. were just piling on goop after goop onto their landing pages, Google did a really smart thing and disrupted the whole space with its very minimal style. Not even sure how deliberate that was, but it was a huge advantage.
- ksangeelee 9y agoI think it was deliberate, because when they did include advertising in search results, they innovated with text-only ads (and on an unobtrusive part of the page). I recall that I grew to appreciate these ads - they were often relevant to what I was doing at that point in time. Much more civilised than the garish GIFs that were the norm at that time.