Inktomi
As the Internet became increasingly popular in the late 1990s during the .com boom, Inktomi was arguably the biggest and most important search engine technology. It is a large database of websites that was started in 1996.
Website owners and marketers focused their attention on ranking high in Inktomi as this was where the bulk of search engine traffic originated from. In fact, Inktomi’s search technology powered other large portals and search engines such as Yahoo, Hotbot, AOL, Real Networks and NBC Internet. The company went public in 1998 and raised $36 million.
At the height of the .com bubble in 2000, Inktomi had a market cap of $25 billion. Eventually, Inktomi was overtaken by Google. Yahoo eventually bought a much weaker Inktomi for $250 million in 2003.
Author: Kris Tabetando
Kris Tabetando provides mergers & acquisitions (M&A) advisory and brokerage services to Internet companies. He also partners with investors to acquire & manage Internet businesses.
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