CHAPTER 20Brewster KahleFounder, WAIS, Internet Archive, Alexa Internet
Brewster Kahle started WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers) in the late '80s while an employee of Thinking Machines. He left in 1993 to found WAIS, Inc. WAIS was one of the earliest forms of Internet search software. Developed before the Web, it was in some ways a predecessor to web search engines. Kahle sold WAIS to AOL in 1995.
The next year, Kahle founded Alexa Internet with Bruce Gilliat. The Alexa toolbar tracked user browsing behavior and suggested related links using collaborative filtering. Once captured, pages visited by users would then be "donated" to the related ...
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