AltaVista
AltaVista once searched more of the young web faster than almost anyone, passed through a chain of owners and portals, and ended as a Yahoo redirect.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Officially Gone
- Peak stage
- general availability
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
A pioneering public web search engine created at Digital Equipment Corporation.
Its large index, natural-language queries and fast hardware made it a defining early gateway to the rapidly expanding World Wide Web.
Existence timeline
Digital opens AltaVista to the public.
The service becomes one of the web's leading search tools.
Compaq, CMGI and Overture successively control the service.
The search engine joins a larger portal company.
Yahoo includes AltaVista in a product shutdown round.
The site redirects users to Yahoo Search.
Why it ended
After acquisitions and declining relevance beside Google, Yahoo closed the service on 8 July 2013.
Last confirmed trace
Archived result pages, browser screenshots, domain captures and contemporary technical papers preserve its interface and indexing ambition.
What it left behind
AltaVista helped establish expectations for comprehensive, immediate web search before the market consolidated around Google.
How we classified it
The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer obtainable in its original public form.
Verified normal public availability maps to 100 under Arrival Score V1.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.