Altavista vs. Altavista

[Thomas Dowling]

-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Cameron <cameron at cs.sfu.ca>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at library.berkeley.edu>
Date: Saturday, January 10, 1998 2:53 AM
Subject: Re: Altavista vs. Altavista


>If you check closely, you'll see that altavista.com forwards its
>search queries to altavista.digital.com.
>
>Essentially, the folks at altavista.com are enjoying a free ride
>and a free opportunity to sell advertising space off the fine
>work by the people at DEC who created and maintain the AltaVista
>search engine.
>


whois altavista.com
AltaVista Technology Inc. (ALTAVISTA-DOM)
   1671 Dell Avenue, Suite 209
   Campbell, CA 95008

   Domain Name: ALTAVISTA.COM

   Administrative Contact:
      Queeney, Keith  (KQ8)  kqueeney at RAHUL.NET
      (408) 364-8777
   Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
      Dhesi, Rahul  (RD69)  dhesi at RAHUL.NET
      408-946-9661

   Record last updated on 03-Jan-97.
   Record created on 01-Feb-95.
   Database last updated on 14-Jan-98 03:51:56 EDT.



Note the "Record created" line--as I recall, that's several months before
DEC's search engine came out.  I'd say that Digital didn't do a sufficiently
careful trademark search, and the folks at AltaVista Technology have been
doing their best to survive the "Our lawyers can beat up your lawyers"
tactic ever since.

Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu