Google and Alta Vista: Who Remembers?
September 9, 2015
A lifetime ago, I did some work for an outfit called Persimmon IT. We fooled around with ways to take advantage of memory, which was a tricky devil in my salad days. The gizmos we used were manufactured by Digital Equipment. The processors were called “hot”, “complex”, and AXP. You may know this foot warmer as the Alpha. Persimmon operated out of an office in North Carolina. We bumped into wizards from Cambridge University (yep, that outfit again), engineers housed on the second floor of a usually warm office in Palo Alto, and individuals whom I never met but I had to slog through their email.
So what?
A person forwarded me a link to a what seems to be an aged write up called “Why Did Alta Vista Search Engine Lose Ground so Quickly to Google?” The write up was penned by an UCLA professor. I don’t have too much to say about the post. I was lucky to finish grade school. I missed the entire fourth and fifth grades because my Calvert Course instructor in Brazil died of yellow jaundice after my second lesson.
I scanned the write up, which you may need to register in order to read the article and the comments thereto. I love walled gardens. They are so special.
I did notice that one reason Alta Vista went south was not mentioned. Due to the brilliant management of the company by Hewlett Packard/Compaq, Alta Vista created some unhappy campers. Few at HP knew about Persimmon, and none of these MBAs had the motivation to learn anything about the use of Alta Vista as a demonstration of the toasty Alpha chips, the clever use of lots of memory, and the speed with which certain content operations could be completed.
Unhappy with the state of affairs, the Palo Alto Alta Vista workers began to sniff for new opportunities. One scented candle burning in the information access night was a fledgling outfit Google, formerly Backrub. Keep in mind that intermingling of wizards was and remains a standard operating procedure in Plastic Fantastic (my name for Sillycon Valley).
The baby Google benefited from HP’s outstanding management methods. The result was the decampment from the HP Way. If my memory serves me, the Google snagged Jeff Dean, Simon Tong, Monica Henzinger, and others. Keep in mind that I am no “real” academic, but my research revealed to me and those who read my three monographs about Google that Google’s “speed” and “scaling” benefited significantly from the work of the Alta Vista folks.
I think this is important because few people in the search business pay much attention to the turbo boost HP unwittingly provided the Google.
In the comments to the “Why Did Alta Vista…” post, there were some other comments which I found stimulating.
- One commenter named Rajesh offered, “I do not remember the last time I searched for something and it did not end up in page 1.” My observation is, “Good for you.” Try this query and let me know how Google delivers on point information: scram action. I did not see any hits to nuclear safety procedures. Did you, Rajesh? I assume your queries are different from mine. By the way, “scram local events” will produce a relevant hit half way down the Google result page.
- Phillip observed that the “time stamp is irrelevant in this modern ear, since sub second search is the norm.” I understand that “time” is not one of Google’s core competencies. Also, many results are returned from caches. The larger point is that Google remains time blind. Google invested in a company that does time well, but sophisticated temporal operations are out of reach for the Google.
- A number of commenting professionals emphasized that Google delivered clutter free, simple, clear results. Last time I looked at a Google results page for this query katy perry the presentation was far from a tidy blue list of relevant results.
- Henry pointed out that the Alta Vista results were presented without logic. I recall that relevant results did appear when a query was appropriately formed.
- One comment pointed out that it was necessary to cut and paste results for the same query processed by multiple search engines. The individual reported that it took a half hour to do this manual work. I would point out that metasearch solutions became available in the early 1990s. Information is available here and here.
Enough of the walk down memory lane. Revisionism is alive and well. Little wonder that folks at Alphabet and other searchy type outfits continue to reinvent the wheel.
Isn’t a search app for a restaurant a “stored search”? Who cares? Very few.
Stephen E Arnold, September 9, 2015
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One Response to “Google and Alta Vista: Who Remembers?”
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It’s nearly impossible to find well-informed people about this topic, but you seem like you know what you’re talking about! Thanks