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Parent company CMGI also announced the resignation of their ceo [searchengineworld.com]
I guess this means in the longer term that Alta Vista should be considered a bigger force in the SE arena?
Moreover, why did they do this? Was it purely to focus on the search engines or were their negative points about running such an email service?
I was thinking about offering email accounts to my users for loyalty, so thats why I mention it
btw side note - someone sticky me plz if they know of a service LIKE bigmailbox that DOESNT pass on information to third parties. Thanks :)
Would be good to hear what people think AV aree going to do inthe long term in regards to SE's
As for the CEO, who cares :) Im sure they are more concerned with a bottom line more so than the atmosphere of the web ;)
Brotherhood, I don't offer free e-mail on any sites, but I'd worry about spammers. If you go to something like that, I'd take appropriate precautions. As far as encouraging return visits, signing up e-mail accounts would do that... but I would think you would need a unique and attractive domain to make it interesting to users. There are plenty of major sites like Yahoo and Hotmail that have well-developed e-mail offerings; I'd guess the only reason people would choose a second tier (no offense intended! :) ) e-mail provider is for "image" purposes. (Kind of like people who get credit cards with a college, church, or sports affiliation.)
About 400,000 e-mailboxes maintained by AltaVista will be closed March 31, the company said Tuesday. Only half of those e-mailboxes were actively used, AltaVista said.
That's 200,000 active users who are losing an email address that was "an e-mail address that will never change - even if you change ISPs". - (agreed rogerd)
The very least that altavista could do is forward mail for a year - but I'll be surprised if it shows that much consideration.
Not impressed with AV - yet again.
It's really true!
Maybe they were reffering to Altavista life...
Well, I think they are going to disappear completely in the long term:)
it's a bit like Excite's email:
excite.co.uk told users to use lycos for email, but excite.com (under EMC2) kept the active email accounts.
what free web-based email will stay around?
I hate to see them taking one more step down the ladder.
Only a few short months ago they were the power house of the search world, and the crown jewels of CMGI. Now it looks like they're about to fade off the radar screen ... a shrinking blip disappearing into the abyss that consumed Infoseek/Go and Excite.
I'll bet their paid-inclusion program is one of their last hurrahs. And I'll bet they're finding out that if you ask people to pay, you have to give them their money's worth in traffic in return.
HAHA, think we can make a fortune?:)
I didn't renew mine after it expired. For me, it was a waste of ad $.
