AltaVista

AltaVista was an early search-engine giant whose fast, sprawling index made the young web feel discoverable.

Searching the early web meant trying to locate useful pages in a rapidly expanding collection of personal sites, businesses, and specialist resources. AltaVista gave that exploration a recognizable starting point. A few typed words could take someone far beyond the sites whose addresses they already knew.

Its place in internet history is tied to that change in scale: the web became something to search, not just a collection of links to follow. The eventual retirement of the brand closed a familiar doorway, even though web search itself had become an everyday habit.

Yahoo! retired AltaVista after search consolidated around Google.