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It's surprising to me that Yahoo couldn't find a buyer for such a legendary brand as AltaVista. If it's just going to be tossed in the bin, give it to Duck Duck

It's surprising to me that Yahoo couldn't find a buyer for such a legendary brand as AltaVista. If it's just going to be tossed in the bin, give it to Duck Duck Go or some other company that's actually trying to do something new with search. Yahoo's stewardship of the AltaVista brand has been shameful.

j45 13y ago
Agreed. The AV search site has been a facade for other underlying search engines for a while, and I'm not sure what would cost so much about it in it's present form. For me, AV was one of the first search engines that really took search forward a step, especially improving the quality and presentation of search results.
derefr 13y ago
I bet they just never thought of it as valuable, since it wasn't making them any money. If Mr. Weinberg was able to get through to the people with yes-power, they'd probably just shrug and hand it over. (I'm assuming here that there's a technocrat with marketing chops sitting in that chair, who can see what such a "gift" buys them in terms of developer street-cred. That might be sadly optimistic, but if it is, then it's exactly the thing Mayer is trying to fix--getting all their best wood behind the important arrows.)
rgbrenner 13y ago
If this was a decade ago, I would agree with you.. but altavista has been practically dead for so long, I can't imagine who would buy it. It would be like asking who wants to buy WebVan or Pets.com... sure lots of people still remember the name, but what they stood for, what kind of company they were, etc is long gone, and no one is going to think for a second that the new company is associated with the original Altavista... they'll just be one more search engine out there.
nashequilibrium 13y ago
DuckDuckGo uses yahoo's search api which is powered by bing. Yahoo research has released the most innovative papers on search but nobody is there to take this from research to product. Instead you find google and bing implementing yahoo's research, its amazing the quality of stuff that comes from there. I also noticed that a few of yahoo's top researchers going to their rivals and then working on search. This is why i didn't believe in the Marissa Mayer hire but i am hoping for the best. She is taking yahoo from a company with high intelligence to being a more low level media company like AOL, therefore most of their talent is going to waste, there is so many products they could be pushing out. The billion they dropped on tumblr could have be used to fund all those researchers crazy ideas, give them 10mill each to build intelligent applications that makes peoples everyday life easier, instead of buying CRUD startups to reach this goal. If you look at yahoo latest earnings most of their money is coming from the Alibaba investment and their hedging of the yen, which seems to have been used to help pay for tumblr. Yahoo cannot buy their way out of this, just like steve jobs could not buy Apples way out during the 90's instead they had to use their human capital and innovate their way out. I don;t know who should have led yahoo but i do know that their biggest strength was their human capital which is being wasted and marginalized. It's even more evident when your competitors are implementing the research successfully and going further.
- coffeemug 13y ago
  There is a great Q&A with Steve Jobs (I can't find it right now), where he explains that you can't sell billions of dollars of product simply by building interesting (or useful) things -- you have to develop a coherent strategy and think through how different pieces fit together. Similarly, you can't jump dump $10m on a hundred research teams, and expect to turn Yahoo around. I used to be in academia and I'm running a startup now. I'm absolutely certain that generating computer science research papers, even brilliant ones, is a heck of a lot easier than the absolutely insane focus required to ship breakthrough products. From what I can tell, Yahoo now has a phenomenal environment for people with this level of focus. As for the castles-in-the-sky research people leaving Yahoo, it's probably better off for both the research people and Yahoo. It's got a new business to build -- funding research papers that go nowhere does nothing to advance that goal.
  - kunai 13y ago
    This is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE For those not initiated, OpenDoc was a multimedia document format developed by Apple before Steve Jobs came back to Apple, which was when he violently killed OpenDoc.
    - learningram 13y ago
      Wish he was alive for a few more years :(
    - gcb0 13y ago
      Killed it and allowed Microsoft to boss them around another couple of decades thanks to office monopoly. Google is now getting close to end this.
      - mynameisvlad 13y ago
        Google ending Microsoft Office's monopoly. That's funny.
mikeash 13y ago
I can only imagine that the name is toxic now, and would probably convey negative value to a site like DDG. It was great back in the day, but now it's the butt of jokes if it's lucky.
norswap 13y ago
I'm not so sure. I'm 22 and most people in my generation wouldn't know what AltaVista is. As would most non-techie I believe. And for the people who know what it is, the brand has absolutely no value.
BryantD 13y ago
As an ex-AltaVista employee, I don't really care about the brand; I care more about the underlying technology.

j45 13y ago

Agreed. The AV search site has been a facade for other underlying search engines for a while, and I'm not sure what would cost so much about it in it's present form. For me, AV was one of the first search engines that really took search forward a step, especially improving the quality and presentation of search results.

derefr 13y ago

I bet they just never thought of it as valuable, since it wasn't making them any money. If Mr. Weinberg was able to get through to the people with yes-power, they'd probably just shrug and hand it over. (I'm assuming here that there's a technocrat with marketing chops sitting in that chair, who can see what such a "gift" buys them in terms of developer street-cred. That might be sadly optimistic, but if it is, then it's exactly the thing Mayer is trying to fix--getting all their best wood behind the important arrows.)

rgbrenner 13y ago

If this was a decade ago, I would agree with you.. but altavista has been practically dead for so long, I can't imagine who would buy it. It would be like asking who wants to buy WebVan or Pets.com... sure lots of people still remember the name, but what they stood for, what kind of company they were, etc is long gone, and no one is going to think for a second that the new company is associated with the original Altavista... they'll just be one more search engine out there.

nashequilibrium 13y ago

DuckDuckGo uses yahoo's search api which is powered by bing. Yahoo research has released the most innovative papers on search but nobody is there to take this from research to product. Instead you find google and bing implementing yahoo's research, its amazing the quality of stuff that comes from there. I also noticed that a few of yahoo's top researchers going to their rivals and then working on search. This is why i didn't believe in the Marissa Mayer hire but i am hoping for the best. She is taking yahoo from a company with high intelligence to being a more low level media company like AOL, therefore most of their talent is going to waste, there is so many products they could be pushing out. The billion they dropped on tumblr could have be used to fund all those researchers crazy ideas, give them 10mill each to build intelligent applications that makes peoples everyday life easier, instead of buying CRUD startups to reach this goal. If you look at yahoo latest earnings most of their money is coming from the Alibaba investment and their hedging of the yen, which seems to have been used to help pay for tumblr. Yahoo cannot buy their way out of this, just like steve jobs could not buy Apples way out during the 90's instead they had to use their human capital and innovate their way out. I don;t know who should have led yahoo but i do know that their biggest strength was their human capital which is being wasted and marginalized. It's even more evident when your competitors are implementing the research successfully and going further.

coffeemug 13y ago
There is a great Q&A with Steve Jobs (I can't find it right now), where he explains that you can't sell billions of dollars of product simply by building interesting (or useful) things -- you have to develop a coherent strategy and think through how different pieces fit together. Similarly, you can't jump dump $10m on a hundred research teams, and expect to turn Yahoo around. I used to be in academia and I'm running a startup now. I'm absolutely certain that generating computer science research papers, even brilliant ones, is a heck of a lot easier than the absolutely insane focus required to ship breakthrough products. From what I can tell, Yahoo now has a phenomenal environment for people with this level of focus. As for the castles-in-the-sky research people leaving Yahoo, it's probably better off for both the research people and Yahoo. It's got a new business to build -- funding research papers that go nowhere does nothing to advance that goal.
- kunai 13y ago
  This is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE For those not initiated, OpenDoc was a multimedia document format developed by Apple before Steve Jobs came back to Apple, which was when he violently killed OpenDoc.
  - learningram 13y ago
    Wish he was alive for a few more years :(
  - gcb0 13y ago
    Killed it and allowed Microsoft to boss them around another couple of decades thanks to office monopoly. Google is now getting close to end this.
    - mynameisvlad 13y ago
      Google ending Microsoft Office's monopoly. That's funny.

mikeash 13y ago

I can only imagine that the name is toxic now, and would probably convey negative value to a site like DDG. It was great back in the day, but now it's the butt of jokes if it's lucky.

norswap 13y ago

I'm not so sure. I'm 22 and most people in my generation wouldn't know what AltaVista is. As would most non-techie I believe. And for the people who know what it is, the brand has absolutely no value.

BryantD 13y ago

As an ex-AltaVista employee, I don't really care about the brand; I care more about the underlying technology.