Welcome to Britannica.com

TO OUR VISITORS

The recent launch of the free Britannica.com site, designed to be the most trusted source of information, learning and knowledge on the Internet, has created such an enormous volume of traffic that the companys servers have experienced a temporary slowdown.

We apologize to everyone who has been unable to access Britannica.com. The tremendous response to Britannica.com has created a tidal wave of activity on our site, and we are working hard to make the site available as quickly as possible.

In many ways, we have truly been victims of our own success. We knew that the site would attract a significant number of users in its first day of operation, but we had no idea that this volume of traffic would be achieved so quickly. In spite of the problems that we are experiencing, we are encouraged by the high demand for Britannica.com, and believe that you will soon find the site to be the best source for information on the Internet.

Once again, I am truly sorry that we have not been able to provide access to our site for all of our visitors. We will have the technical problems resolved shortly, and look forward to welcoming you back to your new home on the Internet at Britannica.com.

Sincerely,

Don Yannias CEO Britannica.com Inc.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), October 20, 1999

Answers

"Well, no, Miss Brooks, I didn't get the report done. Y'see, Brittanica.com was down all night, so I couldn't do any research... Use what? Books? What are books?"

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.hid), October 21, 1999.

I'm sure that having a story printed in just about every major newspaper just a day or so ago about EB offering its stuff on-line for free didn't have anything to do with the tremendous increase in traffic they experienced.....(g)

-- plonk! (realaddress@hotmail.com), October 21, 1999.