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We knew that we didn’t want to work for any big company. We wanted to work together and do something entrepreneurial. – Joe Kraus, Excite CEO, Red Herring magazine, 1995. |
Excite is one of the original search engines. It was conceived by five hackers taking a political science major, then founded by Mark Van Haren, Ryan McIntyre, Ben Lutch, Joe Kraus, Graham Spencer, and Martin Reinfried, over dinner in Rosita’s Taqueria in Redwood City, California on February 28, 1993.
With 65 employees, the company went public in April, 1996 with an initial offering of 2 million shares at $17 each, and then later merged with the @Home cable Internet service provider in May, 1999, to create a combined Internet content and services company.
Key Excite search features are listed below:
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Search Features |
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Function |
Example |
Results |
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Boolean |
space AND mars |
both “space” and “mars” |
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space OR mars |
“space” or “mars” |
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space AND (mars OR venus) |
“space” and either “mars” or “venus”. Always put brackets around OR keywords connected to AND |
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space AND NOT mars |
space, but no pages with “mars” |
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+space +mars -venus |
“space” and “mars” but not “venus” – not recommended – use “space and mars and not venus” instead |
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Language |
zéro |
only French language word “zéro” |