Netbot was the first commercial Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 price comparison service

Price comparison service

On the internet, a price comparison service allows individuals to see different lists of prices for specific products. Most price comparison services do not sell products themselves, but source prices from retailers from whom users can buy...

. Founded by University of Washington

University of Washington

University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

 Computer Science professors Oren Etzioni and Daniel S. Weld

Daniel S. Weld

Daniel S. Weld is the Thomas J. Cable/WRF Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, where he does research in automated planning and scheduling, software agents, and Internet information extraction....

 the company was funded by ARCH Venture Partners, Alta Partners

Alta Partners

Alta Partners is a venture capital firm based in San Francisco, CA. The company was founded in 1996 by Dr. Jean Deleage, Ph.D., who was also a founder of the venture capital firms Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co. and Sofinnova, together with Garrett Gruener, a former general partner at BEDCO.The company...

 and the Madrona Venture Group.
Netbot introduced the Jango comparison shopping “agent” first as a browser plug-in and later as a server product. In addition, the company operated MetaCrawler

MetaCrawler

MetaCrawler is a metasearch engine that blends the top web search results from Google, Yahoo!, Bing , Ask.com, About.com, MIVA, LookSmart and other popular search engines. MetaCrawler also provides users the option to search for images, video, news, yellow pages and white pages...

, a metasearch engine, before licensing it to Go2Net. In October 1997, Netbot was acquired by the Excite

Excite

Excite is a collection of Internet sites and services owned by IAC Search & Media, which is a subsidiary of InterActive Corporation . Launched in 1994, it is an online service offering a variety of content, including an Internet portal, a search engine, a web-based email, instant messaging, stock...

portal for $35M.