It grew out of FTP Search, Tor Egge's doctorate thesis at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, which he started in 1994, which in turn resulted in the formation of Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), established on July 16, 1997.

[2] When AlltheWeb started in 1999, FAST aimed to provide their database to other search engines, major portals, ISPs and content sites.

[3] By August 2, 1999, the AlltheWeb database had grown to 200 million unique URLs.

[4][5][6] In February 2003, FAST's web search division was bought by Overture for $70 million.

started testing live search results on AlltheWeb.