AltaVista announced on Tuesday that they will no longer run their free email service as of March 31st. This affects about 400,000 email addresses (200k of which are "active") ending in "@altavista.com" However, it does not affect any email addresses ending in "@altavista.net" which are owned and operated by Mail.com.

This change affects a very tiny percentage of email addresses in the US today, but still if you own an ezine and can do so without spending much money or time, it's probably worth a shot to send out a notice or two to your subscribers with @altavista.com addresses giving them a link to a form where they can change their email for your ezine easily.

AltaVista will also be shutting down the free email accounts offered on their international sites, however, the date for the shut down isn't set yet. About 150k email addresses would be affected. Looks like they are hoping to sell the email accounts to someone else, or sell an ad recommending their users switch to someone in particular. If nobody bites, then international accounts will get at least 30 days warning before being shut down.