AltaVista Adds Multimedia Search Capability - Including MP3

Computergram International, April 1, 1999

AltaVista Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Compaq Computer Corp, has added multimedia capabilities to its search engine. The service now supports MP3, RealAudio, WAV and AU for audio and RealVideo, QuickTime, ASF, MPEG and AVI for video. When users enter a query, the results are displayed as thumbnails with brief descriptions, ranked by relevance.

With the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) admitting that it is considering suing Lycos Inc for providing access to audio files compressed with the MP3 format, some of which may be pirated, this is an interesting moment for AltaVista to enter the MP3 portal world. The company chooses to distance itself from the intellectual property issues surrounding MP3. "If someone looks up MP3, that's their choice," a product manager told Wired News.