Infoseek (also known as the "big yellow"
) was an American 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 ...
founded in
1994
File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nels ...
by
Steve Kirsch
Steven Todd Kirsch is an American entrepreneur. He has started several companies and was one of two people who independently invented the optical mouse. Kirsch has been both a philanthropic supporter of medical research, and a promoter of misi ...
.
Infoseek was originally operated by the Infoseek Corporation, headquartered in
Sunnyvale, California
Sunnyvale () is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwest Santa Clara County in the U.S. state of California.
Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by portions of San Jose to the nor ...
. Infoseek was bought by
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on Octobe ...
in 1999,
and the technology was merged with that of the Disney-acquired
Starwave to form the
Go.com network.
History
Infoseek launched in January 1994 as a pay-for-use service.
The service was dropped in August 1994 and Infoseek was relaunched as Infoseek search in February 1995.
In 1995, Infoseek struck a deal with
Netscape
Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was on ...
to become the default search engine on
Netscape Navigator.
On June 11, 1996, Infoseek's
initial public offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...
started trading on
Nasdaq
The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...
(under the name SEEK) at $12 per share.
By September 1997, Infoseek had 7.3 million visitors per month.
It was the 7th most visited website that year (5th in 1996) and 10th in 1998. Infoseek acquired the
WebChat Broadcasting System in April 1998.
In 1998, Disney purchased a 43% stake of Infoseek, and incorporated the site into its various media businesses. Around the same time, Disney acquired the
Starwave Corporation, which included ESPN.com and ABCNews.com.
In 1999, Disney acquired the remaining Infoseek stock it didn't own. Disney bundled its Starwave properties and Infoseek and formed the GO.com portal.
Infoseek was among the first search engines to sell advertising on a
CPM, Cost Per Thousand Impressions, basis.
In 1997, the first Cost Per Click programs, as well as the precursor to pop-ups called daughter windows, was sold by east coast sales executive Robert Formentin to
Grey Advertising for a
Procter & Gamble
The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/consumer he ...
Pampers campaign.
In 1998, Infoseek was the first internet company to develop and launch
behavioral targeting
Targeted advertising is a form of advertising, including online advertising, that is directed towards an audience with certain traits, based on the product or person the advertiser is promoting. These traits can either be demographic with a focu ...
via its UltraMatch targeting algorithms. In 1999, Infoseek engineer
Li Yanhong moved to
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the Capital city, capital of the China, People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's Li ...
,
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
and co-founded the search engine
Baidu.
In February 2001, Disney decided to cancel the service and lay off all staff. Also in 2001, Bernt Wahl, Andy Bensky and 15 software engineers, all Infoseek employees, led a management buyout attempt from Disney but were ultimately rebuffed.
Post-demise
Infoseek's Ultraseek Server software technology, an enterprise search engine product, was sold in 2000 to
Inktomi
Inktomi Corporation was a company that provided software for Internet service providers (ISPs). It was incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Foster City, California, United States. Customers included Microsoft, HotBot, Amazon.com, e ...
.
Under Inktomi, Ultraseek Server was renamed "Inktomi Enterprise Search". In December 2002 (prior to the
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 Mana ...
acquisition of Inktomi), the Ultraseek product suite was sold to a competitor Verity Inc, who re-established the Ultraseek brand name and continued development of the product.
Rakuten
() is a Japanese technology conglomerate based in Tokyo, founded by Hiroshi Mikitani in 1997. Centered around Rakuten Ichiba, its businesses include financial services utilizing financial technology, as well as digital content and communicati ...
agreed in November 2000 to acquire Infoseek Japan for $81 million.
In December 2005, Verity was acquired by
Autonomy PLC. Under Autonomy, Ultraseek ceased to be a stand-alone product and became a modular component under the IDOL platform. It continued to be developed and marketed as Autonomy's entry-level keyword-based site search offering until after
Autonomy
In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy, from , ''autonomos'', from αὐτο- ''auto-'' "self" and νόμος ''nomos'', "law", hence when combined understood to mean "one who gives oneself one' ...
was acquired by
Hewlett-Packard
The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
(HP) in October 2011.
Domain name
The "infoseek.com"
domain name
A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...
redirects to "go.com" and the Infoseek brand name is no longer used in
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...
.
However, the
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
n domain and the
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...
ese domain still operate with the Infoseek name.
The Japanese domain name now operates as a web portal known as "Rakuten Infoseek".
See also
*
List of search engines
*
List of assets owned by Disney
References
External links
Infoseek(Archive)
Infoseek AustraliaInfoseek Japan
{{Authority control
Defunct internet search engines
Internet properties established in 1994
Internet properties disestablished in 2001
Companies based in Sunnyvale, California
Disney acquisitions
Dot-com bubble
1998 mergers and acquisitions
1994 establishments in California
1996 initial public offerings