When AltaVista appeared

When AltaVista appeared in December 1995, it used an index much larger than any of the other search engines at that time. Thus, competition forced others to increase their sizes in early 1996. After these initial moves, sizes stayed about the same through September 1997. But by the end of that year, AltaVista and Inktomi began the first of the serious Search Engine Size Wars, competing to claim the bragging rights of being biggest. Inktomi failed to keep up, but Northern Light jumped in to compete with AltaVista in pursuit of the 150 million page mark.

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