AltaVista sheds 160 jobs

Ailing AltaVista Inc has axed a third of its workforce in a bid to cut costs and keep it on the straight and narrow.

Some 160 jobs are to be lost, according to Reuters leaving just 340 people to run the outfit.

That's on top of the 450-odd jobs axed in the last year as the once great dotcom brand slips further and further into obscurity.

No one at AltaVista UK was available by press time to comment on the job losses. Neither was anyone available to say whether the UK would have to bear any of the job cuts.

The job losses were announced on the same day that AltaVista said that James Barnet, the former president of Myfamily.com, has taken up the position of CEO vacated by Ken Barber nine months ago.

Among other problems, he'll have to grapple with falling ad revenue and a Web property that has fallen out of favour with Net users thanks to the rise of search engines such as Google.

Oh well. Nothing like a challenge, is there? ®

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