Altavista

“You don’t need to tell the people that it is good or bad

You just need to tell the people what is going right and what is going wrong”

We have been talking lot of the Indian scenario and blaming some of the dotcoms for their poor performance have we looked at some of the major international players like boo.com, amazon.com who are facing a big financial crunch irrespective of giving a fantastic service.

Looking at Amazon, every one knows that it is the best shopping sites for Books and nothing can beat its services, when first time I heard that a site like amazon is having a financial crunch, but that was really surprising because it was having good business and people were really happy. In fact amazon was made the role model for many more e-shopping sites on the Internet.

But have we ever thought the amount of cost involved, amazon has been servicing people all around the world and the cost involved “BOOM!!!” must be really high. Anyways lets get to the topic on which I am writing. Altavista.com

Altavista.com

“View from Above” That is what Alta Vista means.

Altavista was the first search engine to provide searches in different language and was acquired by CMGI Inc. Though it is one of the major portals when it started giving services and was really the most popular one with a best search services given. But somewhere down the line Google came and the searching at altavista reduced absolutely low. But till today, its been one of the most visited website on this planet. Its been ranked next to google as far as searching is concerned.

1. Google

2. Altavista

3. AOL

Lets breakdown to the services, which Altavista provides.

1. Altavista Search

It is the world’s fastest next to google, most comprehensive search service available in 25 languages with 8 distinct search dimensions. Altavista just to give competition to google started the Look alike of Google, https://raging.com. If you visit the website, its just a carbon copy of google and it is as fast as Google but cant come close to google.

I have been using altavista, still now because sometimes google had failed and have got the results in altavista. But if you want to use the best of the entire search engine, check out copernic, you can check my review on copernic you will get more idea about it.

Image, MP3, Video Search

Till date it is the best image search engine because, It scans the entire database of websites and gives you the best results. The best part at altavista is categorising its searches, this you wont find it any one of the websites.

As far as MP3 is concerned it is good but not the best because you have better search engines only on mp3.

But VIdeo search has been really good and worth a clap. You find quite good amount of video on the net through the video search of altavista.

Translation

This is most of the time I spend my days translating the german, Spanish & French websites in English. Really, this is one feature none of the websites provide. Its an online translation of website or any text. How it works is:

Under text translation just write down the text or copy paste the text you want to translate and use the appropriate language translation.

Shopping

The first web-wide comparison-shopping service on the Internet, providing objective price and product comparison features to help users make intelligent purchasing decisions. Really they have been doing really well as far as shopping section is concerned. They do have maximum hits for these fantastic services

Other Services.

Apart from these services they provide email. Yellow pages etc. But nothing really to go Ga..ga about it. Just an average services, but it gives you link to one of the best sites on the net.

They do have international sections and obviously their Indian section is not that good because what its been said that, most of the International giants like MSN.co.in, Altavisat.co.in & lycosasia.co.in have been just having the Indian portals for their local channels. But guys hold your breath one of the major player is coming and going to Invest 600Millilon$ only for India with a complete team of content players and so people who are waiting to be part of the mammoth company called AOL can have their chance. No doubt it won’t be partnering with local channels but it will be a complete set up and every one knows that when AOL does, it does something big. So all you minnows who are boasting of big services are going to get competition from this BIGGY. Have your fingers crossed and lets see whether the AOL Team approves the whole budgeting.

Overall, Altavista is worth a visit and very useful. This old warhouse has been struggling for a long time and time will only tell, till when they are going to survive.

“But give Kudos!!! For this old horse and the pioneer in this Internet Generation who has been still surviving even after the dotcoms turmoil and giving Fantastic services”

Happy Surfing !!!