[RoutinePlayer]

I remember having AltaVista as my primary bookmark, until they accelerated the ads and monetization, and render it almost completely useless. It was so obvious they wanted to make quick, obscene money from of it. They cared very little about the negative impact that had on user experience. That's why AltaVista went like the dodo. Period.

[l33tman]

According to the article, altavista switched owners 3 times during the last 3 years of its life. I assume one of these had the bright idea to fill the results with crappy paid-for links. Google has these geniuses to thank for priming the playfield for them by destroying themselves.

[hakfoo]

I recall there was a low-bandwidth, "text only" version you could use for some years afterwards which was just the search box. Probably suitable for Lynx users. Then they added one banner.

I don't think the UI switchover was uniquely AltaVista-- remember this was the time when everyone wanted to be a portal and had to have a section with sports scores, repackaged news, and stock tracking.

Yahoo was the last man standing on that path, but I seem to recall a lot of hay being made about the Excite/@Home stuff where the ISPs were supposed to push their portal on unsuspecting customers.