The name AltaVista refers both to an Internet search engine company and to that company’s search engine product.

AltaVista was created by researchers at Digital Equipment Corporation's Western Research Laboratory who were trying to provide services to make finding files on the public network easier.Eric J. Ray, Deborah S. Ray, and Richard Selzer (1998), The AltaVista Search Revolution (2nd ed.), Osborne/McGraw-Hill Although there is some dispute about who was responsible for the original ideaJohn Battelle (2005), The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, Portfolio, two key participants were Louis Monier, who wrote the crawler, and Michael Burrows, who wrote the indexer. The name AltaVista was chosen in relation to the surroundings of their company at Palo Alto. AltaVista was publicly launched as an internet search engine on 15 December, 1995 at http://altavista.digital.com.Lewis, Peter H. (1995-12-18), "Digital Equipment Offers Web Browsers Its ‘Super Spider’", The New York Times: Late Edition - Final, Section D, Page 4, Column 3, <http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60B14FF3F5D0C7B8DDDAB0994DD494D81>Digital Press and Analysts News (1995-12-15). "Digital Develops Internet’s First ‘Super Spider’". biz.digital.announce. (Google Groups). Retrieved on 2007-02-26.

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