Paul Flaherty, AltaVista Creator, Dies

[Tab]

SAN FRANCISCO - Paul A. Flaherty, a computer engineer who helped create the pioneering AltaVista online search engine, has died. He was 42.

Flaherty died March 16 of a heart attack at his home in Belmont, about 20 miles south of San Francisco, family members said Friday.

Flaherty came up with the idea of indexing Web pages that made the AltaVista search engine one of the most popular Internet search tools in the mid-1990s.

"He was such a warm and loving man, and he was exceptionally smart," his brother, Michael, said Friday. "It's just uncanny to find someone with that much intellectual power but that much warmth, too."

Flaherty was working as a research engineer at Digital Equipment Corp. in Palo Alto when he teamed up with two other staff researchers in 1995 to develop AltaVista's technology.

The Web site was made public in December 1995 and within weeks was processing several million searches a day. It was spun off from Digital Equipment as a private company in 1999.

More: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060324/ap_on_hi_te/obit_flaherty

[Redstone]

1. 42 years old? Heart attack? There's a warning to dot-commers who

think that working years of 18-hour days fueled by gallons of caffeinated liquids won't cause problems for them later in life.

Too bad. I liked AltaVista before they went astray. Wait, I didn't mean it like that. I meant too bad he died young, and I liked his work.

Redstone

[951-Riverside]

2. Sitting & no exercise for years will kill ya!

:P

[Media_Lies_Daily]

10. How do you know he didn't exercise? I knew a long-distance....

...runner who died at the age of 40 while running.

[DBoon]

3. He might have had a congentital heart disorder

not all heart attacks result from lifestyle

And as for lifestyle, note the comment from the article:
"I never saw him taking to the more cutthroat lifestyle in Silicon Valley," his brother said.

[high density]

4. It was a great search engine in the day

Around the time of the spinoff they lost focus on the search engine and tried to become a portal as well. After that Google came along and spanked their ass.

RIP Paul Flaherty

[mcscajun]

5. And I still prefer AltaVista to Google. Always have.

:)

Too bad about Flaherty, though. It's always sad when someone so young dies.

[disgruntled_goat]

6. old search engine designers never die

they just go 404-not found

[progressivebydesign]

7. Wow.. that's sad.. he was so young! n/t

[eridani]

8. Just about all early heart disease death is genetic

Of course commentators only mention that when superb physical specimens like that Russian figure skater drop dead.

[Blue_Tires]

9. very sad

altavista was what i first started using way back when