Infoseek

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Infoseek was a very popular search engine founded in 1994 by Steve Kirsch, et. al. By September 1997 it boasted 7.3 million visitors per month ^[1]. It was bought by Disney in 1998, and the technology was merged with that of the Disney-acquired Starwave to form the Go.com network. Since then it has been replaced with Yahoo! search and is no longer in use.

Infoseek featured a very complex system of search modifiers, including boolean modifiers such as the most basic "OR" and "NOT", up to parentheses and quotes, up to being able to say that you want one word or phrase to appear within x number of words from another word or phrase. Infoseek was also known as "big yellow".

Before being bought by Disney, Infoseek also offered a free webhosting package that was better than many of today's offerings. It was free of advertising, and had apparently no limits on the amount of webspace that could be used. After being purchased by Disney and converted to the Go Network (and then Go.com because of trademark disputes with competitor, Goto.com), large, cumbersome ads started appearing on every page hosted. In February 2001, Disney made the decision to cancel the service and layoff the entire staff. Eventually, the webhosting service disappeared entirely, virtually overnight, with little or no warning.

In 2001 Bernt Wahl, Andy Bensky and 15 software engineers -- Infoseek employees -- lead a management buyout attempt from Disney. Elements of Infoseek's Ultraseek software technology were sold in 2000 to Inktomi, which Yahoo later acquired in 2002.

Today, "infoseek.com" now forwards to the "go.com" website. The brand name of Infoseek is now completely unused in North America, however Infoseek Japan still operates.