AltaVista seems to have a love/hate relationship with this particular idea. I haven't read anything about the reasons for the idea's disappearance after it showed up so brightly for such a brief time. I've already made my guesses as to those reasons.

Whatever, shortly after posting this column (May 1999) a link to the idea suddenly showed up again on AltaVista's main page. I was dismayed by AltaVista's decision to return to this, to my mind, highly undesirable idea, but it seemed reasonable that this time they were going to stick with it. After all, it made sense to assume that its reappearance was the result of a decision made by the company after taking the (probably negative) user reaction into account. Still, whether it was going to stay around for a while or not, my instinctive reaction was not only to bookmark the page, but even to copy it.

Sure enough, after only one day the link to the idea disappeared again. The page is still there, but if you don't know about it, you can't find it since no links lead to it. Unless, of course, you're reading this page. And if, instead of rising once again from the dung heap of unwanted web pages, it ultimately truly disappears, you can always view my copy of it.

Go to: ... oh how I'm glad he went away, or
Go to: Only a pawn in their game