Major Search Engines
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AllTheWeb/Fast
AltaVista
Ask Jeeves
Google
Inktomi
AllTheWeb/Fast
AllTheWeb is a website that showcases the Fast Search and Transfer’s search engine. In early 2003 Overture, a pay-per-click search engine formerly known as GoTo, bought Fast Search and Transfer’s search engine unit. AllTheWeb/Fast provides “algorithmic Web search products and services for syndication to portals, ISPs and other search destination sites.” – Quoted from a Overture press release. I personally use AllTheWeb for casual searching. The results are similar to Google’s, but the results are better a lot of the time. In case you’re wondering Fast Search and Transfer is independent from Overture and is now focusing on corporate search services.
AltaVista
AltaVista was once the leading search engine in the world. After a few years at the top, other search engines like Google began to overshadow it. In early 2003 Overture bought AltaVista from CMGI for $140 million. AltaVista currently has the largest searchable database of multimedia files.
Note: Regarding AllTheWeb and AltaVista? Overture was purchased by Yahoo in July 2003.
Ask Jeeves
Ask Jeeves was created in 1996 it’s grown into a fairly popular search engine since then. Right now it’s one of the few independent search engines still standing. On an off topic note Ask Jeeves is dropping the butler in their advertising programs.
What started out as a small project by a few Stanford students has became the most popular search engine in the world. Google currently (7/30/03) provides search results to Yahoo’s, AOL’s, Earthlink’s and a bunch of smaller websites and ISPs. They have the largest number of people using their search engine, directly and indirectly.
Inktomi
Like AllTheWeb and AltaVista Inktomi is now controlled by Yahoo. Inktomi was once a major player in the search engine world since it provided search results to most of the major portals. Currently it’
s used by MSN for back-fill, Hotbot and a lot of smaller sites.