What and how different was Google compared to other search engine that enabled it to dominate the other search engines?
In: Technology
AltaVista was excellent and had good Boolean logic. However, what really boosted Google was that with the mergers of DEC to Compaq and then to HP, the AltaVista indexes were not being updated anymore. So, for about 6 months there was not much of anything new being shown.
You must remember that Google’s total index was tiny compared to AltaVista. At least until that 6 month window. Google kept getting bigger and better on a daily basis.
By the time AltaVista indexes started updating again Google had met and was surpassing its total index and search results.
And the rest is history.
IMHO, if AltaVista hadn’t messed up and had stale indexes than the search engine wars may have turned out a little different. Perhaps Google would still have become dominant, but it may have taken a while longer.
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