Google owns search, of that there is no doubt. According to Hitwise.co.uk Google had a 87.33% share of the UK search market, followed by Yahoo with a paltry 6.06%. (Correct for August 2008). What I find so scary about these stats is not Google’s domination, they make products that mean they deserve it, but rather the lack of competition.
Alta Vista in 1996 as I remember it, thanks to archive.org
When I first used the net in the mid 90’s at my dad’s workplace, they had super fast ISDN. It was an absolute pleasure loading up Netscape Navigator 3.0 and going to Yahoo.com or, my favourite, Alta Vista and surfing the net for hours. Oh what fun we had. The other day I was feeling a little nostalgic so I headed over to the Internet Archive and checked it out.
I remember back then that I never just loaded one search engine and used that one exclusively. Oh no, first Alta Vista, then Yahoo, then Lycos, every possible search engine was used. They all did different things and gave different results. Now I fire up Google and only Google to search, that’s how lazy I’ve become. But it works, so why should I waste my time with sub-par search engines?
What really strikes me is the lack of aggression that the other search engine showed when the Google onslaught began. The only thing Alta Vista had was Babel Fish (Now Yahoo! Babel Fish). Yahoo retreated away from search into providing services like groups and mail as Leo Laporte and the TWiTs have discussed on numerous occasions. So while Google now does everything, Alta Vista looks dead and Yahoo is basically webmail.
Alta Vista in 2008, poor thing.
How the mighty have fallen. The Internet Archive is a great way to see the way things used to be. No flashy Web 2.0 or CSS, just really boring HTML and some Javascript. I love it.
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