Those who have been around the Internet for 10 years or more will remember the "search engine turf wars" before Google and Yahoo became the main games in town. There were many contenders but 4 or 5 were probably dominant, including Lycos. Like modern day Yahoo, players in the search engine game were also trying to grab business by doing the whole gamut of web related business. As Google won the lead share many of the contenders evolved, or perhaps devolved, into mainly web portal and web service companies as has Lycos today. Lycos is still around and a viable company in such areas as purchasing and hosting domains.
So here's the interesting part. The founder of Lycos, Michael Mauldin is a Midland High School grad. Not only a grad, but he was the Valedictorian in 1977. Midland High, it turns out, has spawned a few noted scholars who have made good; too bad I'm not one of them.
3 comments:
Wallace, I had NO idea! That is so neat ... and so little-known. Thanks for sharing!
Back in the day I actually participated in an online panel interview with Michael Mauldin and mentioned the Midland Connection. He was pleasantly surprised to have an interviewer from Midland.
As I recall the interview was shortly after Lycos went public and oddly enough Michael was more interested in talking about some advances in conversational AI he had made for the "Turing Test" with his "Julia" program than the launch of Lycos.
Thanks for the inside insight! Michael is still very much involved in Artificial Language....and robot combat.
Post a Comment