AltaVista? Ask grandpa about it

Early users of the Web, and no one else, will be sad to hear that AltaVista is no more.

AltaVista was one of the first search engines for the Web and was a leader in the market until the 2000s, when it was overlapped by Google. The search engine was shut down Monday after its owner, Yahoo, announced last month that it would be closing down the mid-90s Web relic.

Now, when users go to AltaVista.com, they are taken to the home page for Yahoo Search, which is powered by Micrsoft’s Bing.

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Yahoo came to own AltaVista in 2003 when it purchased the search engine’s then-owners Overture Services Inc. for $1.7 billion.

The now-defunct search engine was mourned by Danny Sullivan of tech news website Search Engine Land.

“Goodbye AltaVista. You deserved better than this. Better than the one-sentence send-off Yahoo gave you today, when announcing your July 8 closure date,” Sullivan said. “But then again, you always were the bright child neglected by your parents.”

Any AltaVista users looking for alternatives should try out google.com or bing.com.

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