Finding stuff online: 20 years of innovative search engines

What would the Internet be without a way to find something specific on its millions of sites? Search engines started providing that function two decades ago. Here are some of the landmarks, from Archie to AltaVista to Google and Bing.

AltaVista (1995)



AltaVista began as a Web search project of Digital Equipment Corporation. It became the most popular Web-crawling search engine of the mid- to late 1990s, retaining that throne until Google usurped it a few years later.

In 1996, Yahoo began using AltaVista to power its Web search results. Once renowned for its streamlined interface, AV rapidly began losing market share around 1999 when it adopted a cluttered "portal" style.

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