HISTORY

The History Of FireFox

Firefox is a browser that is put out by Mozilla Application Suite and owned by Mozilla Corporation. It is one of the top web browsers in the world and has even given Microsoft’s Internet Explorer a run for their money. This mega browser that has become super popular overnight, may not have that much history yet, but it sure does keeps it fans happy. Here is a closer look at the short history of Mozilla Firefox. Blake Ross and Dave Hyatt were experimenting at the Mozilla experimental branch to replace Mozilla’s (parent company Mozilla has been around since 1998) massive software called Mozilla Suite which was used prior to Firefox. Their browser had an IRC client, news, mail and WYSIWYG HTML editor built into one suite that was small and simple, unlike its older counterpart. It still has the cross-platform capabilities that the original browser held. It was written in XUL user interface markup language. By using that language, it allowed the browser to be extended with themes and plug-ins. When Firefox 0.9 was released, many users were worried about the security of it. So Mozilla opened a website called Mozilla Update, with approved plug-ins and themes for users to download and use knowing that they were safe to use. Back in 2002, when it came out for beta testing, they used the name Phoenix. In April of 2003, they changed the name to Firebird, because Phoenix was too close to the BIOS maker Phoenix Technologies. The name Firebird turned out also to used already, so they changed it yet again this time to Mozilla Firebird. But the company that already used the name kept pressure on them. So they changed their name yet again and the final time, to Mozilla Firefox. Firefox had dozens of changed prior to it being released to the public as Firefox 1.0 in November of 2004. Shortly after the initial release, they soon put out Firefox 1.5 to take care of security issues. Originally with Firefox 1.5, it was to be Firefox 1.1, but they decided to merge Firefox 1.1 with and into Firefox 1.5. For release, instead of keeping them apart. In 2006, Firefox 2.0 came out. During Firefox 1.5, they stopped supporting MAC OS X v.10.1. Firefox 1.5.0.12 was the last Firefox that supported Win 95. Firefox 2 was the first Firefox version with Gecko. With Firefox 2, came Tabbed browsing, extension manager, GUI, and more with the improved and updated version of Firefox 1.0. This is the version that made it gain notice across the globe. This was also the last version that supported Windows N.T4.0 and Win 98. In December of 2007, Firefox Live Chat came out. Before Firefox 3 was released or even developed, they asked their users to request what they’d like added onto the popular web browser back in 2006.  With Firefox 3, they redesigned the layout and made it more Web 2.0 friendly. Firefox 3 was released in June of 2008. Firefox has only been around for a short time (7 years in 2009) but that doesn’t make any of their history any less important than companies that have been around longer than Firefox. With Firefox being so young still, it likely will have much more history coming its way and will stay around for a long time, keeping customers happy with their hit browser. Mozilla is staying hard at work in their Firefox department, which keep it up to date and in tune with their users. This article cannot cover what will happen, but it does cover what made Firefox during its last 7 years. Source : http://www.webhostingreport.com

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The History of Alta Vista

Alta Vista is a one of the leading providers of technology and search services on the web.  Its name means, “A view from above.”  Around springtime in the year 1995 a group of scientists from Digital Equipment Corporation’s research lab in Palo Alto, California got together and created a way for every word of every single HTML to be stored in a searchable index. These scientists together created the first full-text, searchable database on the World Wide Web.  On December 15th, 1995 AltaVista opened to the public. It contained an index of 16 million documents. Instantly it was a success. No one knows for certain whose idea it was originally to create it, and there was some dispute about it. We do no for sure there were two key participants, Louis Monier who wrote the crawler, and Michael Burrows, who was responsible for writing the indexer. By the end of the first day, Alta Vista had more than 300,000 searchers using the engine. With in one year of being open to the public AltaVista was dealing with 19 million requests per day. Both casual and professional searchers quickly opted for AltaVista worldwide. AltaVista's service  became the subject of some books and a numerous amount of articles. The search engine’s website   grew to be one of the top destinations on the web, and in 1997 earned $50,000,000 in sponsorship revenue. In addition to this invention, Alta Vista was the first to have multi-lingual search and the first ever search services that support Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. They were also the inventors of Babel Fish.  Babel Fish was the first Internet translation machine service that could decipher and translate entire web pages, phrases and words from, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, and English. It is now called Yahoo! Babel Fish; after Yahoo! took over Alta Vista they renamed it to fit their company.  Alta Vista’s most distinguishing feature was its minimalist interface compared with other search engines of its time. This feature was lost when it became a portal, but it was regained when it refocused its efforts on its search function. Here are some more informational facts about the first ever search engine, Alta Vista: Alta Vista was the first search engine to provide image, audio, and video search capabilities Alta Vista has the most advanced search features, such as, translation and language recognition, specialty search, and multimedia search. Alta Vista has been awarded more search related patents then any of the other search engines of its time – sixty-one to be exact. Alta Vista’s mission is to set the standard for how people find their information in a reasonable amount of time. Also, they strive to search technology in every aspect.  The web continues to grow, which makes it more difficult for people to find the specific information they are looking for.  Finding information is the main reason people go browsing on the web. By adapting and conforming to the ever-changing complexity of the Internet, and innovating their proven search technology, Alta Vista helps users locate what they are searching for, fast and intuitively.  In 2003 Alta Vista was purchased by Overture. This came as a shock to many because it was purchased for only $140,000,000.  Then sadly, that all came to a finish.  At the end of 2003 Yahoo! took charge and purchased Overture.  Alta Vista was part of that package and is now used as a copy of Yahoo!, using a similar search index and a large font interface.  It is boring and plain now, and not at all the exciting search engine it used to be. :(

Source :

www.webhostingreport.com

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The History of Yahoo! - How It All Started...

Yahoo! began as a student hobby and evolved into a global brand that has changed the way people communicate with each other, find and access information and purchase things. The two founders of Yahoo!, David Filo and Jerry Yang, Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, started their guide in a campus trailer in February 1994 as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet. Before long they were spending more time on their home-brewed lists of favorite links than on their doctoral dissertations. Eventually, Jerry and David's lists became too long and unwieldy, and they broke them out into categories. When the categories became too full, they developed subcategories ... and the core concept behind Yahoo! was born.



The Web site started out as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" but eventually received a new moniker with the help of a dictionary. The name Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." Yahoo! itself first resided on Yang's student workstation, "Akebono," while the software was lodged on Filo's computer, "Konishiki" - both named after legendary sumo wrestlers.



Jerry and David soon found they were not alone in wanting a single place to find useful Web sites. Before long, hundreds of people were accessing their guide from well beyond the Stanford trailer. Word spread from friends to what quickly became a significant, loyal audience throughout the closely-knit Internet community. Yahoo! celebrated its first million-hit day in the fall of 1994, translating to almost 100 thousand unique visitors.

Due to the torrent of traffic and enthusiastic reception Yahoo! was receiving, the founders knew they had a potential business on their hands. In March 1995, the pair incorporated the business and met with dozens of Silicon Valley venture capitalists. They eventually came across Sequoia Capital, the well-regarded firm whose most successful investments included Apple Computer, Atari, Oracle and Cisco Systems. They agreed to fund Yahoo! in April 1995 with an initial investment of nearly $2 million.

Realizing their new company had the potential to grow quickly, Jerry and David began to shop for a management team. They hired Tim Koogle, a veteran of Motorola and an alumnus of the Stanford engineering department, as chief executive officer and Jeffrey Mallett, founder of Novell's WordPerfect consumer division, as chief operating officer. They secured a second round of funding in Fall 1995 from investors Reuters Ltd. and Softbank. Yahoo! launched a highly-successful IPO in April 1996 with a total of 49 employees.

Today, Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet communications, commerce and media company that offers a comprehensive branded network of services to more than 345 million individuals each month worldwide. As the first online navigational guide to the Web, www.yahoo.com is the leading guide in terms of traffic, advertising, household and business user reach. Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and reaches the largest audience worldwide. The company also provides online business and enterprise services designed to enhance the productivity and Web presence of Yahoo!'s clients. These services include Corporate Yahoo!, a popular customized enterprise portal solution; audio and video streaming; store hosting and management; and Web site tools and services. The company's global Web network includes 25 World properties. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Yahoo! has offices in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, Canada and the United States.



Source : http://docs.yahoo.com