Rod Schrock, AltaVista CEO, has resigned with immediate effect, to "spend more time with his family". In the UK this is a comic euphemism for getting fired. Schrock also said it was time to move on - maybe he jumped before he was pushed by parent company CMGI.

AltaVista, a blue chip name in a bubble dotcom industry, has not been doing very well, despite massive investment by CMGI, falling well behind the super-portals such as Yahoo! and AOL. To cap it all, its search engine, the foundation of the company, isn't even as good as Google.

There, a whole article about AltaVista, without even mentioning the lies over the flat fee access service it was supposed to be introducing in the UK.

D'oh!

Okay, so while we're on the subject, Sam Sethi, European Marketing Director of CMGI, told Reg today that Schrock's departure had absolutely nothing to do with the farce in the UK. Everyone clear about that?

Getmapping.com plc - which takes aerial snaps and makes them available on the Net - reported an increased turnover of £428,000 for the six months to 30 June 2000. Gross profit hit £294,000 although loss before tax swung in at £695,000, no doubt helped along by the earlier acquisition of Wildgoose Publications, an aerial photography processing company, for £652,000 cash. Getmapping raised £6.5 million when it floated on AIM in April this year.

ADVFN - on-line financial information outfit - reported a net loss of 29,000 for the year ended June 30 compared to a loss of £240,000 during the same period last year. The company didn't report turnover for the year in its interims published today. In March the company floated on AIM and currently has £3.25 million sat in the bank gathering dust.

Commerce One, the e-business software developer, has reported lower than expected losses for its third quarter. The net loss was $14.7 million, which works out at around nine cents per share. Wall Street estimates had been around the 12-cent mark.

E-Bay reported higher than expected earnings and revenues for the quarter, resulting in recorded net earnings of $19.1 million, up from $3 million a

year ago. Online revenues stood at $102 million, up from $88 million last year. The number of registered users also increased, growing to 18.9 million.

Shares in E*Trade, the online brokerage, were up 26 per cent yesterday, on the back of surprisingly good results this quarter. Although trading volume fell 11 per cent, revenues increased one per cent sequentially. E*Trade reported net income of $7.2 million. Last year the company made a loss in the same quarter.

OneTel, the Australian telecoms group, has shelved plans to float its business on the London Stock Exchange. The group said it was put off by the poor recent performance of technology stocks and low confidence among telecoms investors.

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