Yahoo pulls the plug on search engine Altavista

For most internet users in the late 1990's Altavista was where to head to if they wanted to search for something.

The name itself it redolent of the early days of the World Wide Web, but today 18 years down the line all that remains of the pioneering search engine is a memory. Owner Yahoo on Monday pulled the plug on AltaVista, which was once one of the web's most popular search engines.

Users visiting the site now, get redirected to Yahoo's own search page.

Palo Alto-based AltaVista debuted back in December 1995, three years before the founding of Google.

The search engine rolled out of labs at Digital Equipment Corporation, a computer vendor that was later acquired by Compaq. The search engine was actually quite revolutionary for the times, it was faster than its competitors at the time, covered more of the web, and had an advanced back-end system, with a minimalistic user interface on lines of the biggest search engine of today.

In its salad days, AltaVista boasted over 80 million hits per day, before Google came along to steal the turf from under the search engine's feet in the early 2000s.

Yahoo had announced the imminent demise of Altavista late last month, prompting a mix of reactions from consumers, many of whom had no idea of the pre-Google search engine continued existence.

Many web users would be saddened with the development, particularly those who had seen Yahoo jettison legacy-webware of the '90s such as Geocities and Delicious, which at least found a new home and lease of life with YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen in 2011.

When Yahoo announced its plans for AltaVista, Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan eulogised the ''Amazing Altavista,'' saying that the product had never been nurtured as it deserved to be and deserved a better sendoff than it got being eighth in a list of 12 services slated for the chopping block.

''You deserved from Yahoo, itself one of the old-time brands of the Web, to have more attention paid to your role,'' Sullivan said.

The decision to close those dozen services by the end of September comes as part of Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer's drive to focus efforts into building new products rather than trying to fix older ones that were not delivering.

Since Mayer took charge at the top about a year ago, the company has decided to retire off around two dozen services, each time saying that it was looking to sharpen its focus on building new products.