- Infoseek
Infoseek was a very popular
search engine founded in 1994 bySteve Kirsch . It was also known as "big yellow".It was bought by
The Walt Disney Company in 1998, and the technology was merged with that of the Disney-acquiredStarwave to form theGo.com network. Since then it has been replaced withYahoo! search and is no longer in use.Features
Infoseek featured a very complex system of
search modifiers , includingboolean modifiers such as the most basic "OR" and "NOT", parentheses, and quotes, up to being able to say that one wanted one word or phrase to appear within "x" number of words from another word or phrase.Before being bought by Disney, Infoseek also offered a free
web hosting package. It was free of advertising, and had no limit on the amount of file storage space that could be used. Advertising was added after the Disney purchase.History
By September 1997, Infoseek boasted 7.3 million visitors per month. [http://www.clubi.ie/webserch/engines/infoseek/history.htm Infoseek - a history (from WebSerch)] ] It was bought by
The Walt Disney Company in 1998, and the technology was merged with that of the Disney-acquiredStarwave to form theGo.com network.In 1999, Infoseek engineer
Li Yanhong moved toBeijing ,China and co-founded the search engineBaidu .In February 2001, Disney made the decision to cancel the service and lay off the entire staff. Eventually,when the hosting service was shut down.
In 2001 Bernt Wahl, Andy Bensky and 15 software engineers -- Infoseek employees -- led a management buyout attempt from Disney.
Infoseek's
Ultraseek Server software technology, an enterprise search engine product, was sold in 2000 toInktomi . Under Inktomi, Ultraseek Server was renamed "Inktomi Enterprise Search". In December 2002 (prior toYahoo 's acquisition of Inktomi), the Ultraseek product suite was sold to a competitorVerity Inc , who re-established the Ultraseek brand name and continued development of the product.In December 2005, Verity was acquired by UK company Autonomy PLC. Under Autonomy, Ultraseek continues to be actively developed and marketed as Autonomy's entry-level keyword-based site search offering.
Domain name
Today, the
domain name "infoseek.com" now forwards to the "go.com" website. The brand name of Infoseek is now completely unused in North America, however Infoseek Japan still operates, along with Infoseek Australia infoseek.com.auReferences
External links
* [http://www.infoseek.co.jp/ Infoseek Japan]
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