Those of us who worked there thank you!

I loved me the 'near' keyword - thanks!

I both appreciated Alta Vista, and appreciated its office space in Littleton ( i think ) when i worked in it after its passing. ;)

Loved everything about Alta Vista, including the logo, and the UI.

I miss 90s Internet in general. It wasn't the ugly battleground and desolation planet that the current net has become.

Remember Guestbooks? you'd visit a website, and volunteer your name and which country you were from and leave comments. And it wouldn't be a cesspool of spam and porn and XSS attacks? How quaint!

Oh gosh, yes! And reading the guestbook was always so fun. An elderly friend of mine passed away in 2018, and in doing a (google) search of him, I found guestbooks he'd signed 20 years ago.

You would look for a thing and the first five pages were random mailing list discussion archives discussing how the thing was 5 years before... Altavista was impressive, but there is a reason why it went away.