AltaVista, Lycos & more pull plug on Free Net access FOREVER; 12/10/00

[editor]

www.bluelight.com will remain up until 1/2001, until K-Mart makes a decicion to stay or quit.

December 6, 2000. AltaVista pulls plug; is BlueLight next? ASSOCIATED PRESS as reported in the Detroit Free Press. On Sunday AltaVista will cut off some 3 million users from its free Internet access service. Kmart-owned BlueLight.com says it is considering dropping its free service after the holidays. Kmart-backed BlueLight.com took over assets of its failed provider, Spinway Inc., Monday in order to retain more than 5 million registered users through the peak shopping season.BlueLight spokesman Dave Karraker said the company will decide the fate of the service in January 2001.

In a somewhat related story, CNet reported on December 5, 2000 AltaVista pulls plug on free Net access AltaVista is terminating its free Internet accessservice, making it the latest company to exit the market. This is only somewhat related because the service was not provided by Spinway, but instead was provided by 1stUp which also went out of business.

[Ang1970]

Good riddance!
It's low-balling providers like these that bring the overall quality of the net down by forcing isp's to lower their operating costs to stay in business.
Are there any providers with decent tech support at all anymore?


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Angelo Quaglia
AQ Productions

[mfym]

I used Alta Vista free service since the beginning. I found it very reliable and fast, and it's shame 1st Up went out of business.

I'm sure some another company will fill the gap. There are millions of users for such a service. That's hard to ignore.

As for tech support, the only good tech support I've found is Digidesign's.

[editor]

Yes I used Lycos and found it reliable. As far as ISP tech. support, I have never found any that was great, I pretty much had to figure it out on my own. In fact the best tech support resource on the net for anything is the DUC in this new computer age.

Just five years ago you used to get a computer nerd on the phone that knew almost too much about every product. These days you get a kid fresh out of high school or still in it, reading from a hypercard stack, when you call tech support at a company.

The death of these free companies does stop so much net trash from getting on-line, but I have always believed in a free internet both in content and access. It would be a shame also to see corporate interests take over what we see and how we get on-line... which is of course going to happen, its just a matter of time.

[motopsyco]

I used AltaVista too and I thought it was great. It was reliable and had very good performance. What is killing "free internet" is the economic models used for it. Too often it is thought that commerce will support access. Well folks if you were using a free access provider did you click on their advertising? I sure didn't. The person who figures out a better model will be the next Bill Gates (not necessarlly the new dark overlord).

I just signed up with Earthlink (sigh!).

Cheers!