Official line
AltaVista retired; traffic sent to Yahoo Search.
Yahoo · Search · Product
AltaVista
Discontinued
1995–2013 · 18 years in market
Launched
Dec 15, 1995
Discontinued
Jul 8, 2013
Cause of death
Acquired, then shut down
Evidence
Unsourced
What was it?
The search engine that once felt like magic. Bought, neglected, and finally redirected into Yahoo Search.
Why it died
Editorial reading
Yahoo bought a search engine and did not treat ranking as the company. Google did.
Founder takeaway
Acquiring the better product does not help if you starve it. Search compounds; neglect does too.
Sources
Unsourced — editorial reading
No primary source is attached yet. Treat the interpretation as editorial, not a citation.
What replaced it
Google
Google Search
The ranking culture AltaVista’s owners would not fund.
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