Infoseek
Encyclopedia
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
founded in 1994 by Steve Kirsch
Steve Kirsch
Steven Todd Kirsch is an American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID. He invented and owns a patent on an early version of the optical mouse. After bringing multiple successful startup companies through IPO and...
.
Infoseek was originally operated by the Infoseek Corporation, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California
Sunnyvale, California
Sunnyvale is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is one of the major cities that make up the Silicon Valley located in the San Francisco Bay Area...
. Infoseek was bought by The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
in 1998, and the technology was merged with that of the Disney-acquired Starwave
Starwave
Starwave was a Seattle, Washington based software and website company, founded in 1993 by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. The company produced many original CD-ROM titles, including disks for Clint Eastwood, Sting, and Peter Gabriel...
to form the Go.com
Go.com
Go.com is a web portal first launched by Jeff Gold, and now operated by the Walt Disney Internet Group, which is a part of The Walt Disney Company. The portal includes content from ABC News, ESPN, and FamilyFun.com, all of which are associated with Disney and are hosted under a .go.com name...
network. Since then it has been replaced with Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
search and is no longer in use.
Features
Infoseek featured a very complex system of search modifiers, including booleanBoolean logic
Boolean algebra is a logical calculus of truth values, developed by George Boole in the 1840s. It resembles the algebra of real numbers, but with the numeric operations of multiplication xy, addition x + y, and negation −x replaced by the respective logical operations of...
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. It bought out the WebChat Broadcasting SystemWebChat Broadcasting System
WebChat Broadcasting System was a virtual community that existed during the 1990s. Supported by online advertising, it was one of few services like it at the time to offer free integrated community services including chat, homesteading, messaging, and user profiles. It was one of the most...
in April 1998. Infoseek was bought by The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
in 1998, and the technology was merged with that of the Disney-acquired Starwave
Starwave
Starwave was a Seattle, Washington based software and website company, founded in 1993 by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. The company produced many original CD-ROM titles, including disks for Clint Eastwood, Sting, and Peter Gabriel...
to form the Go.com
Go.com
Go.com is a web portal first launched by Jeff Gold, and now operated by the Walt Disney Internet Group, which is a part of The Walt Disney Company. The portal includes content from ABC News, ESPN, and FamilyFun.com, all of which are associated with Disney and are hosted under a .go.com name...
network.
Infoseek was the first search engine to sell advertising on a CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) basis. In 1996, then east coast Sales Manager, Robert Formentin sold the first Cost Per Click programs as well as the precursor to pop-ups called daughter windows to Grey Advertising for a Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble is a Fortune 500 American multinational corporation headquartered in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio and manufactures a wide range of consumer goods....
Pampers
Pampers
Pampers is a brand of baby products marketed by Procter & Gamble. Pampers was at one time only used as a name for a disposable diaper.-Products:...
campaign.
In 1997 Infoseek was the first internet company to develop and launch behavioral targeting
Behavioral targeting
Behavioral targeting is a technique used by online publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns.Behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual's web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select...
via its UltraMatch targeting algorithms.
In 1999, Infoseek engineer Li Yanhong moved to Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and co-founded the search engine Baidu
Baidu
Baidu, Inc. , simply known as Baidu and incorporated on January 18, 2000, is a Chinese web services company headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China....
.
In February 2001, Disney made the decision to cancel the service and lay off the entire staff. Eventually, 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 to Inktomi
Inktomi
Inktomi Corporation was a California company that provided software for Internet service providers. It was founded in 1996 by UC Berkeley professor Eric Brewer and graduate student Paul Gauthier. The company was initially founded based on the real-world success of the search engine they developed...
. Under Inktomi, Ultraseek Server was renamed "Inktomi Enterprise Search". In December 2002 (prior to Yahoo's 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.
In December 2005, Verity was acquired by UK company Autonomy PLC
Autonomy Corporation
Autonomy is a multinational enterprise software company with joint headquarters in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and San Francisco, USA and a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard. The company uses a combination of technologies born out of research at the University of Cambridge...
. Under Autonomy, Ultraseek continues to be actively developed and marketed as Autonomy's entry-level keyword-based site search offering.
Domain name
Today, the "infoseek.com" domain nameDomain name
A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....
forwards to the "go.com" website. The brand name of Infoseek is now completely unused in North America; however it is still operating as Infoseek Japan.
External links
- Infoseek (Archive)
- Infoseek Japan