AlltheWeb (sometimes referred to as FAST or FAST Search) was an Internet
search engine
A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
that made its debut in mid-1999 and was closed in 2011. It grew out of ''FTP Search'', Tor Egge's doctorate thesis at the
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
*Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
*Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including the ...
, which he started in 1994, which in turn resulted in the formation of
Fast Search & Transfer
Microsoft Development Center Norway (known as Fast Search & Transfer ASA (FAST) before 2010) is a Norwegian company, founded in 1997 and based in Oslo. FAST focused on data search technologies. It had offices located in Germany, Italy, Sri Lanka ...
(FAST), established on July 16, 1997.
Traits
When AlltheWeb started in 1999, FAST aimed to provide their database to other search engines, major portals,
ISPs
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
and content sites.
By August 2, 1999, the AlltheWeb database had grown to 200 million unique
URLs
A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifie ...
.
By June 2002, their crawler had indexed over 2 billion pages.
AlltheWeb claimed a few advantages over Google, such as a fresher database, more advanced search features, search clustering and a completely customizable look.
Closure
In February 2003, FAST's web search division was bought by
Overture
Overture (from French ''ouverture'', "opening") in music was originally the instrumental introduction to a ballet, opera, or oratorio in the 17th century. During the early Romantic era, composers such as Beethoven and Mendelssohn composed overt ...
for $70 million. In July 2003, Overture was acquired by
Yahoo!
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...
, putting AlltheWeb under the ownership of Yahoo!. Shortly after Yahoo!'s acquisition, the AlltheWeb site started using Yahoo!'s database and some of the advanced functions were removed, such as
FTP
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...
search and direct image search.
In May 2006, Yahoo! started testing live search results on AlltheWeb.
On April 4, 2011, AlltheWeb was shut down by Yahoo!.
See also
*
List of search engines
Search engines, including web search engines, selection-based search engines, metasearch engines, desktop search tools, and web portals and vertical market websites have a search facility for online databases.
By content/topic
General ...
References
External links
*
Alltheweb.essearch Engine (archived).
{{Web search engines
Defunct internet search engines
Discontinued Yahoo! services
Internet properties established in 1999
Internet properties disestablished in 2011
Dot-com bubble
1999 establishments in Norway