He was a renowned specialist in Internet protocols and the inventor of the AltaVista search engine.

The Web site was made public in December 1995 and within weeks was processing several million searches a day.

[1]He held an amateur radio Extra class license with the call sign N9FZX.

At age 42, Flaherty died of a heart attack at his home in Belmont, California.

This biographical article relating to a computer specialist in the United States is a stub.