AltaVista pulls down the blinds on e-tail unit

NEWS AltaVista is shutting down its ecommerce site Shopping.com because it no longer wants to focus on B2C. The internet group has said it wants to focus on developing search engine technology, and that Shopping.com does not fit into that strategy. Shopping.com was incorporated into AltaVista after both companies were bought by Compaq in early 1999. While Compaq originally planned to merge the two services, internet incubator firm CMGI, which has since taken a majority stake in AltaVista, has opted to focus on search engines over the less profitable e-tail service.