# What Happens to Old Search Engines? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 4, 2006, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-old-search-engines/375263 "2006-10-04T16:01:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2006, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-old-search-engines/375263/1 "2006-10-04T16:01:47Z")
Remember internet search engines like “ALTA VISTA”, “Ask Jeeves”, etc.? In this age of GOOGLE, why does anybody need other search engines? I gues once advertisers stop reimbusing a SE for hits, it is dead. Anyway, do any other search engines survive? ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2006, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-old-search-engines/375263/2 "2006-10-04T16:06:10Z")
[AltaVista](http://www.altavista.com/) is still around, and Ask Jeeves was simply renamed [Ask.com](http://www.ask.com/). ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2006, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-old-search-engines/375263/3 "2006-10-04T16:10:28Z")
[SearchEngineWatch.com](http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2156451). Lots of search engines survive and thrive in “age of Google.” [Why all caps? It’s not an initialsim.] ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2006, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-old-search-engines/375263/4 "2006-10-04T16:12:09Z")
[bumper sticker] **Old Search Engines Never Die… They Just Stop Crawling** [/bumper sticker] ---
**Author:** ![Will\_Repair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a698b9/32.png) [@Will\_Repair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Will_Repair)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2006, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-old-search-engines/375263/5 "2006-10-04T22:10:12Z")
I do a lot of searching on the web and I get different results from Google and Alta Vista. So sometimes I find what I need on Alta Vista. Google ranking can be bad if you’re looking for an obscure document. I use both because they’re the only ones that search .pdf documents. ---
**Author:** ![carterba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/85e7bf/32.png) [@carterba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carterba)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2006, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-old-search-engines/375263/6 "2006-10-05T01:04:37Z")
AltaVista was bought by Yahoo (along with Overture, Inktomi, and some other company I can’t recall right now). If you do a search on AltaVista and hover your mouse over one of the returned links, you’ll see that it’s going through [yahoo.com](http://yahoo.com). I suspect AltaVista results are the same as Yahoo results now. That’s what happens to old search engines: they get bought and their technologies assimilated. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2006, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-old-search-engines/375263/7 "2006-10-05T01:15:11Z")
[And sometimes they just shut down.](http://www.profusion.com/) ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2006, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-old-search-engines/375263/8 "2006-10-05T01:39:30Z")
[QUOTE=carterba] AltaVista was bought by Yahoo (along with Overture, Inktomi, and some other company I can’t recall right now). If you do a search on AltaVista and hover your mouse over one of the returned links, you’ll see that it’s going through [yahoo.com](http://yahoo.com). I suspect AltaVista results are the same as Yahoo results now. That’s what happens to old search engines: they get bought and their technologies assimilated. [/QUOTE] Alta Vista used to have a fantastic boolean search engine. When they got bought out, that kind of went by the wayside. [AllTheWeb.com](http://AllTheWeb.com) still has a boolean search field, but it’s just not the same.