AltaVista - Business Transactions

Business Transactions

In 1996, AltaVista became the exclusive provider of search results for Yahoo!. In 1998, Digital was sold to Compaq and in 1999, Compaq redesigned AltaVista as a web portal, hoping to compete with Yahoo!. Under CEO Rod Schrock, AltaVista abandoned its streamlined search page and focused on features like shopping and free email. In June 1998, Compaq paid AltaVista Technology Incorporated ("ATI") $3.3 million for the domain name altavista.com – Jack Marshall, cofounder of ATI, had registered the name in 1994.

In June 1999, Compaq sold a majority stake in AltaVista to CMGI, an internet investment company. CMGI filed for an initial public offering for AltaVista to take place in April 2000, but as the internet bubble collapsed, the IPO was cancelled. Meanwhile, it became clear that AltaVista's portal strategy was unsuccessful, and the search service began losing market share, especially to Google. After a series of layoffs and several management changes, AltaVista gradually shed its portal features and refocused on search. By 2002, AltaVista had improved the quality and freshness of its results and redesigned its user interface.

In February 2003, AltaVista was bought by Overture Services, Inc. In July 2003, Overture itself was taken over by Yahoo!.

In December 2010, a Yahoo! employee leaked PowerPoint slides that the search engine would be shut down as part of a consolidation at Yahoo!. In May 2011, the shutdown commenced, and all results are now returned on a Yahoo! page. As of October 2012, the search engine still uses Yahoo's results with AltaVista branding. In November, however, searches were modified to utilize Yahoo! Search BOSS APIs and no longer use AltaVista branding.