Before Google ran the internet, there was AltaVista. Launched in 1995 by Digital Equipment Corporation, AltaVista was one of the first legit search engines that actually made it easier to find stuff online—no more digging through sketchy web directories. It was crazy fast for the time, indexing tens of millions of pages when most of us were still on dial-up. They dropped features like advanced search, image search, and translation tools way before it was cool. By 1997, it was the go-to search engine for anyone who knew what the internet even was. But like a lot of early tech, it got passed around—bought by Compaq, then HP, and eventually Yahoo picked it up in 2003 and slowly let it die. They pulled the plug in 2013. It was one of those “right place, right time” products that just got steamrolled by better branding and execution (yeah, Google).