I saw a website today that tried to romanticize Alta Vista as the first pre-Google search engine. To me, it was anything but. I had my scariest computer experience simply by going to that website. I knew nothing about computer security then, and the moment I arrived at their page my browser got hijacked. A million popups started replicating on my VGA monitor, faster than I could close them. In short time, my 2G of RAM was totally saturated and within minutes Windows XP froze completely. Not knowing what to do, I re-booted my computer...then the REAL fun happened. My first computer virus. Before TOR, if you wanted to know what the Dark Web was all you had to do was visit Alta Vista. You were guaranteed immediate DLL injection. The internet was the "Wild Wild West" back then.
That is possible. I was a real noob back then and it was so long ago. But I am pretty sure it was the official domain.
LOL - yeah, I remember Alta Vista. And Netscape Navigator - even back then we were trying to avoid Microsoft edit:Explorer - why on earth did I write Outlook at first??? (oh yes, I had just been fiddling with it). Also Deja News (a usenet search engine) before it got acquired by google. I once earned the nickname 'DejaBorg' on usenet because my own archives of some groups almost rivalled Deja's (and my signature was TheBorg - well, it was almost original at the time). Who remembers using gopher?
LOL I remember the Gopher protocol, but I really didn't use it. Check this out https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher-protocol/
Thank you for that @Michaela Joy , what a great read! This bit tickled me: McCahill told Berners-Lee that he would need to look at the Web more closely. But it wasn’t much to look at when McCahill went back to Minnesota and examined it. There were no graphics yet. It was still only running on NeXT computers. “I wasn’t feeling it,” McCahill says. I told him, ‘Tim, I don’t think so.’ Of course, I look back and say, ‘I might have been wrong.’ ” [my emphasis]
I also remember AOL (Arseholes On Line ) as a nightmare "service"... Such a nasty and aggressive "business attitude" - how did it survive for so long?
Yeah, I had a brief time on AOL in the UK. Those VAT-dodging, false-advertising, accounts-fiddling scum. I didn't stay for long before dumping them. I only went to AOL because Pipex limited my account due to downloading too much, and there weren't many choices back then. Downloading too much... on a 14.4/28.8 kbps dial-up...
AOL back then use to send me floppys & CDs every 6 months or so, I never installed any of them but did take a look @ their webpage (back in the 90's). Now my Verizon email addy uses AOL mail as their access page, I think Verizon my of absorbed AOL sometime awhile back.
I used Infoseek pre google. got plenty of viruses from AOL and FATE X and all that crap. it was truly crazy back then. now it's just annoying Twitter spam. or go to USATODAY in Microsoft Edge with nothing blocked. that website is atrocious. if you wanna know something go browse the latest journal on Congress.gov. they aren't really that long and u can search to see what your Representative or Senator said on any given day instead of suffering through local news adverts and Twitter spam. I was reading the other day that like 3 IRS officials got suspended and received heavy fines and were re-hired. I was like Wtf? a lot of this stuff never comes out until months later. FOIA requests take years sometimes.
The web in general can be like that, thank goodness for ad blockers, it's barely usable without one. I have a fast connection and if I turn off my filter the browser slows down noticeably from all the crap most web sites serve up. Alta Vista was the first search engine I called home. I actually thought it was really well done. You could use logic terms in searches to really tune them. For example this and that or this and not that. Then they went the retard way lacking those controls like Google. I think I went to Yahoo or something after that. I've had to live without those logic controls since. Now I just use retard Google like everyone else.
Sure was. Around that time, I got my first pc and thought 'where's all that pr0n I've heard about' - I'd only previously used the internet at college and the local library where you have to behave. I soon found what I was looking for, and was so engrossed I never noticed my modem re-dialling (remember that sound ?). I'd clicked something that had downloaded a script to change my dial-up number to a premium number. Looking at naughty pics for an hour had cost me about £100. If I hadn't noticed what was going on, even regular surfing would have still been charged at £1.50 a minute - my next phone bill would have been astronomical. Wild West indeed.