Metasearch Engines: In Memoriam
Before search engine companies (and particularly Google) grew to become gargantuan players in the economy, there were myriad competing search engines and directories, none really gaining the upper hand (you know – like Infoseek, AltaVista, Inktomi, Lycos, Ask Jeeves, Looksmart, Open Directory, Yahoo, and, er, Google). They ranked content differently as they each tried to come up with the most accurate algorithms (or in some cases, human-curated means) for doing so. [Today, “the algorithm” basically refers...