"Hmmm.. I'm pretty sure AltaVista ran on DEC Alpha hardware, not Sun."

Yes, they did. Remember - the original URL for altavista was: altavista.digital.com.

I don't think we knew about Inktomi at the time, but it certainly was a possibility. Our other guess was Ask Jeeves, since we didn't think that Excite had the money for that kind of hardware. But who knows, maybe Exodus floated the bill for that too.