Maria Lourdes C. Capilitan

SysAnal (O0A)

July 8, 2008

Case Study

Brewster Kahle

Founder, WAIS, Internet Archive, Alexa Internet

             Brewster Kahle started Wide Area Information Services (WAIS) in 80’s while employee of Thinking Machines. WAIS is one of internet search software. It is being sold to AOL in 1995. In 1996 he founded Alexa Internet with Bruce Gilliat. Lately, become acquired by Amazon in 1999. I learned that try not to make too many leaps at once. Having company means it is much harder to blame somebody else. Lastly, in having business partner you chould have mutual respect and compatibility which is very important.

            Thinking Machines had the great fortune of starting with $8 Million. They hired VP from Digital Equipment Corporation. The idea from WAIS is to make network services. Tim Berners- Lee was working on same things. The difficult things that WAIS have is about the computer networks by that time. They still manages to have idea of using of freeware and shareware but for pay version.

            They also started first when studio web services business. Their  customers are Wall Street Journal, Encyclopedia Britannica, Government Printing Office, House of Representatives and Senates. The WAIS system did advertising – based services, first subscription – based services for Wall Street Journal. In 1994 they moved into the city to work with publishers.

            In working with customers they learned that in dealing with business people they are frank because working with business people not with lawyers but to business people who is straight forward. Clients have difficulties imagining something they can’t see at least a demonstration of. The company’s main goal is to build a Library.

            After solving problems to WAIS they built two organizations it was Alexa Internet which is for profit and Archive Internet for non profit.

            Alexa Internet was funded by Bill Dunn and co-founder with a business-oriented fellow Bruce Gilliat. The idea of it was to help guide people around the Net. It was then called as collaborative filtering. The problem in Alexa is that it couldn’t get the ad mode to work worth. They have million of users but they didn’t know how to make business out of it.

            Mentors of Kahle were Danny Hillis who is four years older, a colleague at MIT and Bill Dunn. For big corporations to preserve start up, do things much cheaper than they had. Also, stop buying hardware.