Acting MD Stephanie Himoff said yesterday:
"From today, AltaVista is focusing on our core business: internet search. Search is the second most popular UK on-line activity, after e-mail. Our focus is to provide the best service to enable British users find the information they need on the internet."
AltaVista was the first major ISP to announce unmetered dial-up internet access for a flat fee. However, it did so without first agreeing all the terms of a wholesale package which it needed from BT. The AltaVista Chief Executive claimed the company’s service had users when in fact it had never been launched – although tens of thousands had registered in the hope of using the service.
Pierre Paperon, President of AltaVista Europe said:
"Over the past seven months Andy Mitchell built our UK business almost from scratch. We are very grateful for all he has done to grow an excellent UK search service and a strong organisation. The mistakes in our planned internet access service - which we do acknowledge - probably made Andy's departure inevitable, and we support his decision."