4 ms·
I'd say that before Google, "AltaVista knew". In my experience, it was AltaVista that transformed the web/Internet from a collection of disparate sites to a si
by femto 12y ago
I'd say that before Google, "AltaVista knew". In my experience, it was AltaVista that transformed the web/Internet from a collection of disparate sites to a single place that you went for answers to questions.
Before AltaVista, I used to write the URL for any useful web and ftp servers that I found in a logbook, so I could find them again. Getting an answer was a matter of looking up the logbook, deciding which website might have the required information, then typing the URL into my browser. After AltaVista the logbook fell into disuse, as locating information was a matter of typing a few well chosen keywords into AltaVista and visiting a few of its top hits.
Google took over from AltaVista, but at the time it felt like Google was a "better AltaVista" than something completely new.
- jmnicolas 12y agoMaybe I didn't know about Alta Vista at the time, I can't remember the search engines I was using back then, but what I remember is that every single search was returning thousands of porn results. Google was a revelation, it actually found things !
- saraid216 12y agoI used Dogpile, which searched about 5 engines and gave you the results for all of them.
- bsder 12y agoSo did AltaVista. And, AltaVista actually showed you a clustermap of results keywords that you could refine. So, if you typed in "python" you would see a clustermap of results that included a bunch of herpetology in that cluster and a bunch of computer science in that cluster, etc. I still miss that.
- antman 12y agoHere you are: http://search.carrotsearch.com/carrot2-webapp/search?source=web&view=folders&skin=fancy-compact&query=python&results=100&algorithm=lingo3g&EToolsDocumentSource.country=ALL&EToolsDocumentSource.language=ALL&EToolsDocumentSource.customerId=&EToolsDocumentSource.safeSearch=false http://search.carrotsearch.com/carrot2-webapp/search?source=...
- bsder 12y agoYou might not want to spread that one around yet. 3 links about Burmese pythons hardly qualifies as a cloud around herpetology. I think they should avoid using this as their tech demo. Not being as capable as a 15 year old search engine running on significantly less powerful hardware is kind of embarrassing.
- musername 12y agoThe technical capability can't be inferred from the used capacity. The comparison is unjust.