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AltaVista background information
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MG
Oct 15, 2011, 3:52:39 PM10/15/11
to
Recently I thought about AltaVista, the search engine I used in the
1990s, without any doubt my favourite one back then. I remember the
"[d|i|g|i|t|a|l]" branding well, but unfortunately didn't really look
beyond that back then. (I was also quite young.)
I was wondering, are there documents (articles, books and so forth)
telling a thing or two about how it came into being and outlining
the technological foundation? I'm, needless to say, interested if
VMS was involved. (Else Tru64 or any other DEC operating system
and hardware platform of interest.)
- MG
1990s, without any doubt my favourite one back then. I remember the
"[d|i|g|i|t|a|l]" branding well, but unfortunately didn't really look
beyond that back then. (I was also quite young.)
I was wondering, are there documents (articles, books and so forth)
telling a thing or two about how it came into being and outlining
the technological foundation? I'm, needless to say, interested if
VMS was involved. (Else Tru64 or any other DEC operating system
and hardware platform of interest.)
- MG
John Wallace
Oct 15, 2011, 4:30:42 PM10/15/11
to
VMS? No. Tru64? Yes. Alpha? Yes.
No VMS, and one of the reasons there was no VMS was that Altavista was
(iirc) intended as a showcase for what becomes possible when you have
a 64bit address space. VMS didn't have real 64bit support at that
time.
I was going to suggest you have a look at the Digital Technical
Journal, which is always informative, but it seems they didn't do an
article on Altavista Search. Altavista Mail, Altavista Firewall, etc
are covered, but not the one that started the Altavista brand.
The Wikipedia article says there are books on the subject. I'm not
familiar with any of them.
Maybe someone else can add some more detail - but there won't be much
VMS content in AltaVista Search.
There was (at least) one search engine that started life on VMS.
Northernlight.com was in some ways more like an online searchable
library than what we now think of as a classical search engine.
Content was organised by subject area, and some of the content was
"for fee" stuff as well as the usual "for free" stuff. They're still
around, and still in the same basic line of business. No idea if VMS
is in their business.
JF Mezei
Oct 15, 2011, 6:05:38 PM10/15/11
to
MG wrote:
> Recently I thought about AltaVista, the search engine I used in the
Alta Vista was one of the rare mafketing attempts by Digital to showcase
> Recently I thought about AltaVista, the search engine I used in the
what its Alpha chip could do. And they had a fair success and exposure
with it because people knew it ran on Alpha.
Unfortunatly, as part of the many divestitures to prepare Digital to be
purchased by Compaq, it was spun off and faded into obscurity and its
leftovers were purchased by Yahoo. (which which was not an Alpha shop).
MG
Oct 15, 2011, 8:14:41 PM10/15/11
to
On 15-10-2011 22:30, John Wallace wrote:
> Digital? Yes.
> VMS? No. Tru64? Yes. Alpha? Yes.
Are you summing it up for yourself, or?
> Digital? Yes.
> VMS? No. Tru64? Yes. Alpha? Yes.
> No VMS, and one of the reasons there was no VMS was that Altavista was
> (iirc) intended as a showcase for what becomes possible when you have
> a 64bit address space. VMS didn't have real 64bit support at that
> time.
before that?)
> I was going to suggest you have a look at the Digital Technical
> Journal, which is always informative, but it seems they didn't do an
> article on Altavista Search.
> The Wikipedia article says there are books on the subject. I'm not
> familiar with any of them.
> Maybe someone else can add some more detail - but there won't be much
> VMS content in AltaVista Search.
AltaVista seems to have survived. It's too long ago for something
like, say, Archive.org to have backed up:
<http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://altavista.digital.com>
- MG
Arne Vajhøj
Oct 15, 2011, 9:53:29 PM10/15/11
to
On 10/15/2011 8:14 PM, MG wrote:
> On 15-10-2011 22:30, John Wallace wrote:
>> No VMS, and one of the reasons there was no VMS was that Altavista was
>> (iirc) intended as a showcase for what becomes possible when you have
>> a 64bit address space. VMS didn't have real 64bit support at that
>> time.
>
> VMS Alpha didn't have 64-bit support? (Which versions, V6.1 and those
> before that?)
I think 1.0, 1.5, 6.1 and 6.2.
> On 15-10-2011 22:30, John Wallace wrote:
>> No VMS, and one of the reasons there was no VMS was that Altavista was
>> (iirc) intended as a showcase for what becomes possible when you have
>> a 64bit address space. VMS didn't have real 64bit support at that
>> time.
>
> VMS Alpha didn't have 64-bit support? (Which versions, V6.1 and those
> before that?)
Arne
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
Oct 16, 2011, 4:05:00 AM10/16/11
to
In article <4e9a03b3$0$20076$c3e8da3$92d0...@news.astraweb.com>, JF
there was perhaps a real interest in using ALPHA from Apple. Apple is
still around, of course, a master of marketing, and doing quite well
even though Microsoft sales are much larger. DEC could have perhaps
done that with better management and better marketing.
Marketing is important. A couple of years ago, I remember reading an
interview in the excellent English music magazine MOJO with Gene
Simmons. The conversation turned to wealth.
MOJO: How much is it?
Simmons: About 200.
MOJO: Million dollars?
Simmons: What else?
In the latest MOJO, there is a short article on the new KISS album in
which (no joke!) it is mentioned that there will be a tie-in with Hello
Kitty. Simmons points out that in terms of merchandising (not record
sales) he earns more than the Beatles and Elvis together.
I still can't picture Olsen on a lunch box, though. :-)
Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> writes:
> Alta Vista was one of the rare mafketing attempts by Digital to showcase
> what its Alpha chip could do. And they had a fair success and exposure
> with it because people knew it ran on Alpha.
Marketing is essential. As the recent blast from the past indicates,
> Alta Vista was one of the rare mafketing attempts by Digital to showcase
> what its Alpha chip could do. And they had a fair success and exposure
> with it because people knew it ran on Alpha.
there was perhaps a real interest in using ALPHA from Apple. Apple is
still around, of course, a master of marketing, and doing quite well
even though Microsoft sales are much larger. DEC could have perhaps
done that with better management and better marketing.
Marketing is important. A couple of years ago, I remember reading an
interview in the excellent English music magazine MOJO with Gene
Simmons. The conversation turned to wealth.
MOJO: How much is it?
Simmons: About 200.
MOJO: Million dollars?
Simmons: What else?
In the latest MOJO, there is a short article on the new KISS album in
which (no joke!) it is mentioned that there will be a tie-in with Hello
Kitty. Simmons points out that in terms of merchandising (not record
sales) he earns more than the Beatles and Elvis together.
I still can't picture Olsen on a lunch box, though. :-)
joukj
Oct 17, 2011, 4:18:05 AM10/17/11
to
I remember getting the CD-set on my desk exactly the same day as
windows95 was released claiming with a lot of press releases that it was
now 32-bits
Jouk
dsnyder
Oct 17, 2011, 7:34:50 AM10/17/11
to
The Hardware Behind AltaVista
AltaVista: AlphaStation 500, 256 MB memory, 6GB disk.
AlphaStation 500's handle all external traffic to the site.
They run a custom multi-threaded Web server which sends
queries to the Web indexer and News indexer.
Web Indexer: AlphaServer 8400 5/300, 10 processors, 6 GB
memory, 210 GB RAID disk. This model is the most powerful
computer built by Digital. These servers run the query
engine. The Web index is larger than 40 GB, but most
requests take less than a second.
Scooter: AlphaServer 4100 5/300, 1.5 GB memory, 30 GB RAID
disk. The super-spider runs from this machine. It fetches
pages from the Web and sends them to Vista, our primary web
indexer.
Vista: AlphaServer 4100 5/300, 2 processors, 2GB memory,
180GB RAID disk. This machine indexes Scooter output and
serves as a central distribution point for new index data.
News Indexer: AlphaServer 600 5/333, 896MB memory, 13 GB
disk. This machine keeps an up-to-date index of the news
spool: since new articles appear and old articles expire all
the time, it is in fact quite busy, even though the index it
serves is much smaller than the Web index.
News Server: AlphaServer 600 5/333, 896MB memory, 24 GB RAID
disks. It maintains a current news spool for the News
Indexer. It also serves the articles via http to those of
you who don't want to know about news servers but want to
read news.
Those aren't typos, either -- those are machines with many, MANY
megabytes
of RAM, and they're hooked up to some of the fastest random-access
backing
store in the world with capacities in the many, many gigabyte range.
AltaVista is fast because DEC threw some phenomenally capable
resources at
the problem.
MG
Oct 17, 2011, 5:06:17 PM10/17/11
to
looking for and interested in! I'm also glad you stuck with the topic
at hand, that's quite a rare nowadays. Anyway, I'm very grateful.
- MG
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
Oct 17, 2011, 7:32:52 PM10/17/11
to
In article
<19561f15-0126-46dc...@a12g2000vbz.googlegroups.com>,
<19561f15-0126-46dc...@a12g2000vbz.googlegroups.com>,
dsnyder <daniel...@gmail.com> writes:
> The Hardware Behind AltaVista
>
>
> AltaVista: AlphaStation 500, 256 MB memory, 6GB disk.
> AlphaStation 500's handle all external traffic to the site.
> They run a custom multi-threaded Web server which sends
> queries to the Web indexer and News indexer.
> The Hardware Behind AltaVista
>
>
> AltaVista: AlphaStation 500, 256 MB memory, 6GB disk.
> AlphaStation 500's handle all external traffic to the site.
> They run a custom multi-threaded Web server which sends
> queries to the Web indexer and News indexer.
> News Indexer: AlphaServer 600 5/333, 896MB memory, 13 GB
> disk. This machine keeps an up-to-date index of the news
> spool: since new articles appear and old articles expire all
> the time, it is in fact quite busy, even though the index it
> serves is much smaller than the Web index.
>
>
> News Server: AlphaServer 600 5/333, 896MB memory, 24 GB RAID
> disks. It maintains a current news spool for the News
> Indexer. It also serves the articles via http to those of
> you who don't want to know about news servers but want to
> read news.
I've got more than that at home now. :-)
> disk. This machine keeps an up-to-date index of the news
> spool: since new articles appear and old articles expire all
> the time, it is in fact quite busy, even though the index it
> serves is much smaller than the Web index.
>
>
> News Server: AlphaServer 600 5/333, 896MB memory, 24 GB RAID
> disks. It maintains a current news spool for the News
> Indexer. It also serves the articles via http to those of
> you who don't want to know about news servers but want to
> read news.
Paul Sture
Oct 18, 2011, 7:52:03 AM10/18/11
to
shares later collapsed. Here we are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista
"In June 1999, Compaq sold a majority stake in AltaVista to CMGI, an
internet investment company.[9] CMGI filed for an initial public
offering for AltaVista to take place in April 2000, but as the internet
bubble collapsed, the IPO was cancelled.[10] Meanwhile, it became clear
that AltaVista's portal strategy was unsuccessful, and the search
service began losing market share, especially to Google. After a series
of layoffs and several management changes, AltaVista gradually shed its
portal features and refocused on search. By 2002, AltaVista had
improved the quality and freshness of its results and redesigned its
user interface"
Mike Tomlinson
Oct 18, 2011, 9:14:00 AM10/18/11
to
In article <4e99e486$0$2411$e4fe...@news2.news.xs4all.nl>, MG
<marc...@SPAMxs4all.nl> writes
>Recently I thought about AltaVista, the search engine I used in the
>1990s, without any doubt my favourite one back then.
I remember seeing a photo of it some years ago. It was floor-standing,
about the size of a washing machine, and had a thick bundle of black
cables running down to it from the ceiling.
Tried Google and the Wayback Machine to see if I could find it, but no
luck.
--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")
<marc...@SPAMxs4all.nl> writes
>Recently I thought about AltaVista, the search engine I used in the
>1990s, without any doubt my favourite one back then.
about the size of a washing machine, and had a thick bundle of black
cables running down to it from the ceiling.
Tried Google and the Wayback Machine to see if I could find it, but no
luck.
--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")
Hans Bachner
Oct 18, 2011, 9:03:40 PM10/18/11
to
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply <hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de>
wrote:
> In article
> <19561f15-0126-46dc...@a12g2000vbz.googlegroups.com>,
> dsnyder <daniel...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> The Hardware Behind AltaVista
>>
>> AltaVista: AlphaStation 500, 256 MB memory, 6GB disk.
<snip>
Ah, I see - you dropped the TurboLaser and other gear from the original
list... :-)
Hans.
wrote:
> In article
> <19561f15-0126-46dc...@a12g2000vbz.googlegroups.com>,
> dsnyder <daniel...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> The Hardware Behind AltaVista
>>
>> AltaVista: AlphaStation 500, 256 MB memory, 6GB disk.
>> News Indexer: AlphaServer 600 5/333, 896MB memory, 13 GB
>> disk.
<snip>
>> disk.
>> News Server: AlphaServer 600 5/333, 896MB memory, 24 GB RAID
>> disks.
<snip>
>> disks.
> I've got more than that at home now. :-)
Ok, so you will offer a search service any time soon?
Ah, I see - you dropped the TurboLaser and other gear from the original
list... :-)
Hans.
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