AltaVista been a key word type search engine gave a great deal of examples
of the words 'history' and 'Internet' so the search had to be made more
specific by using grouping "History of the Internet" or +history +Internet
this gave several sites such as http://www.davesite.com/webstation/net-history.shtml
and
http://www.microsoft.com/insider/internet/articles/history.htm
Yahoo! is a subject based search engine so the categories:
History Computers and Internet > History and
History Computers and Internet > Software > History
clicking on one of these takes you to the next level and sites such
as:
http://www.ox.compsoc.net/~swhite/history/
and
http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/comphist/
The difference is that AltaVista is a keyword search engine and Yahoo! is a subject based search engine.
Search for "Bill Gates" then "Bill Gates and Microsoft" and found
http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/default.asp
which lead to http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/bio.asp