Go2Net's MetaCrawler began as a research project at the University of Washington. In 1997 the web had many search engines, and each covered only part of it. A search on one engine could miss pages that another found. MetaCrawler sent a single query to several engines at once, then combined the results. The Seattle company added other sites and services around it. Go2Net went public in April 1997, early in the internet boom, with a small offering.

A Layer on Top

Russell Horowitz founded Go2Net in 1996. The bet was that the web needed a layer on top of existing tools, one that saved people time by gathering results into one page. Go2Net licensed MetaCrawler from the University of Washington and made it part of its service in March 1997. It earned money from advertising on its growing network of sites. That network also included sites built around games and finance.

Paul Allen, Then InfoSpace

Go2Net priced its offering at $8 a share in April 1997, selling 1,600,000 shares. The stock rose many times over during the boom, with a lift from an investment by Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures. In 2000 Go2Net merged with InfoSpace in a stock deal worth about $4 billion at announcement. It was one of the final big deals of the boom. MetaCrawler and Dogpile, which Go2Net had bought, lived on under InfoSpace.

Cover: The Net Mender, Alfred Stieglitz. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a fisherman mending a net (the net).