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One of the first search engines
for the world wide web. Alta Vista was born at Digital Equipment Corp
(dec) in 1995, the software being developed as s result of an internal
obsession with keeping track of old e-mail. It was acquired by Compaq
as part of its 1998 takeover of Digital, but was sold to cgmi, an
investment group, in 1999 in a deal that valued the company at $2.7 billion.
Alta Vista caused a stir in Europe in Early 2000 when it announced the
launch of a free isp service, complete with free phone calls, the
first company to make such an announcement. Whatever its intention, the
service never materialised, severely damaging the company's credibility in
the process. Despite its early start in the search engine sector, much of
its ground has now been lost to sleeker competitors such as google.
In early 2003, Alta Vista was sold to Overture, another web search company,
for $140m, representing a loss of over $2 billion in less than four years
for its previous owners. |
