The Dot Com Super Bowl

An anonymous reader writes "Remember Epidemic.com and Lifeminders.com? Me neither. But Forbes has a funny story looking back on these dot-bombs and a bunch of other internet startups which advertised during the 2000 Super Bowl. They call the game The Bubble Bowl since over a dozen internet companies blew $40 million on ads, and then most of them went out of business. It's cool to see the ads (I miss the pets.com sock puppet!) and remember some of these crackheaded business ideas."

Comments

The TechieGold.com goldfish

[Skyshadow]

There was a lot of great advertising (and a lot of terrible, terrible ads, too) back in like the summer of 2000. The ads were like a manifestation of how insanely much cash was being thrown around back then. Having just moved to the Valley, it was an absolutely intoxicating experience -- we had no *idea* about the level of smack that was about to be laid down on us.

Anyhow, speaking of dot-com ads, I miss the "TechieGold.com" goldfish. There were these stupid radio commercials that played every, oh, fifteen seconds or on KSJO here in San Jose about a fish shilling for this job site. The fish would talk in a kinda-French accent about how he too could get a job if only, alas, he were not only a fish. This is back when there were still jobs in the Silicon Valley.

Then the jobs went away, the advertising dried up and I experimented with extended bouts of abject fear related to my unemployment and KSJO got bought by those motherless cocksuckers at ClearChannel and turned into a spainish language format. But still, here five years later my wife and I will occassionally slip elements of this commercial into our conversations -- last time we were at Ikea she made a comment about being "surrounded by gravel and crude decor" that made my crack up in the store and had the other proto-yuppies staring at us.

And no, I never did look at the site. Anyhow, this has been your ten second dot-com nonsequitor; you may return to your business.

Re:The TechieGold.com goldfish

[Fulton Green]

It might be worth pointing out that TechieGold is still around. As it always was, it's simply an Internet storefront for the "job shops" that are under the umbrella of Stride & Associates, including my personal favorite (in the sarcastic sense), Atlantis Partners.

I met with an AP recruiter once after answering a TechieGold ad that looked attractive. Whether or not it's actually true, it looked as if the recruiting office's business model was based on hiring young, aggressive recruiters for commision-only compensation. It showed when the recruiter that interviewing me was trying to get me to commit upfront to taking whatever TechieGold could find for me (within my parameters) before consulting her database for acronym matches. I don't remember exactly why, but I seem to remember the recruiter steering me away from the specific job I had applied for. Hmmm ...

Forbes web site is one big commercial

[xmas2003]

Maybe it's just me, but I felt like when I went to the Forbes site I felt like it was one big commercial. The first link has about a dozen ads, and the second link is doing constant updates - seemed to be worse in IE than Firefox.

Re:Forbes web site is one big commercial

[tylernt]

I think the web developers at Forbes should win an award for the dumbest web interface ever. Every time I got halfway through reading the text, the site would send me to the next 'slide' and I had to hit 'Previous' and then 'Stop' so I had time to finish.

What kind of brain-dead MORON designs that kind of web interface? Do they really think users are incapable of clicking 'Next' by themselves? How did they think the users GOT to forbes.com!?

Geeks in business

[MyLongNickName]

But everyone knows that geeks know everything about business, and the PHBs are the ones who destroy business! How could all these big geek corps go out of business? I blame Bill Gates and George Bush.

Re:Geeks in business

[jellomizer]

Point taken, that nature of the echonomy back in 2000 was much different. Geeks were considered the way to the future, of profit. But part of the problem is that we got greedy and started asking for more money then we were honestly worth. A normal cubial programmer developing a web site should not be getting $100k a year. So when the .COMs started to slide they give them an option less pay to quit. (Because the job market is still large at the time most decided to get laid off because they can find an other job at that same wage, there are still some who still think they can!) Entry Level Programmers Went from 50k a year in 2001 to about 25-35k a year. Heck I am almost back to my starting salary.

Re:Geeks in business

[jellomizer]

Well I don't think it was about marketing the code monkey did a good job at that, if they didn't do the job at marketing then the Dot Bomb would never have started. People did by stuff online or at least looked at it the problem was that they realized there was no real value to some of this stuff online vs. going to a store. Paying Shipping on a 40 lbs bag of dogfood makes the savings a lot less. Then there is the lost value of having to wait for it to ship. It was more of an issue that there money was coming in from investors making the company grow very fast faster then they should so they expanded themselfs faster then actuall profit so when the invesors stopped they had all these extra expenses without the revenue.

Re:Geeks in business

[bartle]

All they know is that there must be growth, growth, growth. So here they found something where they believed it would promise growth and wealthiness beyond imagination -- and for a short period of time they were right. Because they pumped money in like mad.

I worked for Epidemic.com in a technical capacity during it's brief bolide existance and though I didn't sit in on all the high level meetings I walked out of there with a sense that the whole company had been conned. It was obvious to everyone in the company that we were blowing stupid amounts of money but I really think this was due less to management incompetence than pressure from the investors to spend everything we got.

The plan was, I believe, to create a pile of small companies, drive them to IPO, and make a ton on the stock. The investors knew exactly what they were doing and it was never their intention to create long term businesses. And it worked - the controlling forces made tons of cash, the general public got screwed out of money, and some corporate officers got handcuffed to a sinking ship.

dizzy refresh rate

[mortonda]

Can anyone here actually read the entire slide before it reloads a new slide?

Re:dizzy refresh rate

[Lisandro]

I have this weird, irrational feeling that the "slower" button might slow the slides down. But that's just me :)

Fuck I work for Kforce.

[F34nor]

and my job is going NOWHERE.

sock puppet lives on

[bigbigbison]

The pets'com sock puppet lives on in commercials for insurance company 1-800-Bar-None.

Re:sock puppet lives on

[The I Shing]

And when Triumph the Insult Comic Dog was interviewing the members of Bon Jovi, he commented on the fact that they were using his image on some of the passes. "I'll sue your asses!" he shouts at them, "I'm not kidding! Ask the sock puppet!" and then the scene cuts to him having his way with the sock puppet while huffing, "Say my name! What's my name?! Say it! Say my name!" Ah, late night TV.

Re:sock puppet lives on

[The-Bus]

As stated in the article, it's for car financing. I've actually seen the commercial but did not remember the name of the company.

What is more interesting is to see what of the domain names?

Pets.com domain is now owned by PetSmart, who cannot render the page in Firefox correctly.
TechieGold.com is still around.
Computer.com is owned by Tech Depot.
LifeMinders.com is owned by "Cross Media Marketing Corporation"
Epidemic.com is one of those weird search engines, this one owned by "Netincome Corp"
OurBeginning(s).com now points to Ashton Stationery.

Note none of the "noun" Dot Coms survived... Warehouse.com or Drugstore.com or Shoes.com. But there's plenty of "name" ones that people remember (eBay, etc).

Re:sock puppet lives on

[PCM2]

Note none of the "noun" Dot Coms survived... Warehouse.com or Drugstore.com or Shoes.com.

Whaa--? Drugstore.com is still around. The Warehouse.com domain is owned by CDW, which bought MacWarehouse and MicroWarehouse, etc. I don't know if Shoes.com is the original, but it looks like an online shoestore to me. If the name recognition on "noun" dot-coms is so poor, you'd think they would have all just packed it in by now.

Re:sock puppet lives on

[EnronHaliburton2004]

And if you want to have a good laugh, here's the video with Insult and The Sock Puppet:

http://www.milkandcookies.com/keywords/triumphdog/

Better off advertising on Blade Runner

[AtariAmarok]

It looks like these companies would do a lot better advertising on things like "Blade Runner", like Atari and TDK did. This did wonders for them.

let's not single out the people with ideas...

[jxyama]

>remember some of these crackheaded business ideas

let's not single out the people with "crackheaded" ideas for scrutny and remember the VCs that believed those ideas were worth their money.

Re:let's not single out the people with ideas...

[twiddlingbits]

Now I get it... the VC's were the ones on Crack! We were just taking advantage of them in thier diminished state. Catbert would be proud! :)

Re:let's not single out the people with ideas...

[Tablizer]

let's not single out the people with "crackheaded" ideas for scrutny and remember the VCs that believed those ideas were worth their money.

The smarter VC's used *stock investor* money, not their own money. Many of them made out reasonably well because they sold some of their shares on the way up. In other words, the smarter VC's took advantage of stupid stock buyers and most of the dot-com money came from them.

slide show

[same_old_story]

is the slideshow refresh speed suppoused to remind us how quickly these companies disappeared?
"oh, pets.com and"
(burst)
"oh, computers.com and"
(burst)

Reminder...

[grub]

To check out Fucked Company for the latest dot-bomb companies.

Fuck you, Forbes

[karmaflux]

I read the article. Some of it was amusing.

But the idiot in charge of writing that moronic javascript slideshow needs to be shot. Or fired. Or both.

In the summer of 2000....

[Snowbeam]

...we also had Adcritic as a free and enterprising service to see all our Ads for free. Now see what it has becomes :-(

Day trading

[adam31]

E*trade's harsh reality:
The day traders went broke and had to get real jobs

More like had to start doing their real jobs at their real jobs... until those went bust. And then they had to get real jobs.

I worked for one of them....

[brywalker]

I worked at Outpost.com which was doing all the work for Computers.com on Superbowl Sunday. Just about everyone that worked for Outpost in the sales and customer services departments worked that night, we had a ton of food and stuff while we waited for the commercial to air and the phones to start ringing off the hook. Long story short, the phones rang like 5 times. No more calls after that. Dismal failure.

Re:I worked for one of them....

[Reignking]

Didn't marketing think that

1) People would continue watching the Super Bowl
2) Even if people were captivated by the ad, visit the website, and not call??

Futurama referenced

[InfiniteWisdom]

The idiot in charge of writing that moronic javascript slideshow needs to be fired. Out of a cannon. Into the sun.

Re:Futurama referenced

[Tablizer]

The idiot in charge of writing that moronic javascript slideshow needs to be fired. Out of a cannon. Into the sun.

Amen! It kept moving to the next image before I even asked it to. And, when I closed the pop-up mpeg/movie snippet viewer, it closed the original window also.

Tip to designer: If HTML can do the same thing, then do not use JavaScript instead. And, lose the image progression timer.

Re:Futurama referenced

[ConceptJunkie]

Don't bust on the poor Javascript guy, he was a CEO worth $100 million 5 years ago.

the bubble bowl?

[jxyama]

totally off topic, but if 2000 super bowl can be dubbed the "bubble" bowl, then 2004 would naturally be remembered as...

the breast bowl!! (NSFW)

Re:the bubble bowl?

[Leo McGarry]

am i mistaken to think that "NSFW" is not a commonly used acronym here..?

Yes. You are also mistaken to think that sentences aren't supposed to begin with capital letters, that the personal pronoun "I" can be used without capitalization, that two periods followed by a question mark is a punctuation mark and that it's okay to end a sentence with an ellipsis without a period.

Furthermore, please avoid the use of acronyms that aren't already accepted as words themselves. You can say things like "DVD" and "CPU" because they're universally understood, but generally acronyms serve only to hinder communication, not to facilitate it. This isn't 1850. You're not Western Union by the letter.

At this very moment, this Web site is running a story called "Don't Write FORTRAN" that cleverly (or, you know, not) admonishes computer programmers for writing illiterate computer code. Might I humbly suggest that we hold ourselves to the same standard when it comes to things meant to be read by other human beings?

Re:the bubble bowl?

[rjelks]

How the fark are we supposed to know what NSFW means?

Forgotten?

[Otter]

Today, most of these Internet pioneers are dead and gone, forgotten as the score of the game (St. Louis 23, Tennessee 16).

The tackle on the one yard line, with time expired, to prevent a game-tying touchdown? Yeah, there's probably not a football fan alive who remembers that ending. I guess my brain is too full of memories of the Cowboys beating the Bills 48-14 six years in a row.

Re:Forgotten?

[greechneb]

You mean the one that Mike Jones, the linebacker, made to stop the outstretched Kevin Dyson, at about the half yard line, since St. Louis had screwed up and let Tennessee have too much time on. The one that everyone at work talked about for weeks afterwords, the one that half the people at work had a background with that picture on it? - Nope, don't remember that one at all, now you tell me there were commercials during that game... interesting.

I was basically a drug pusher in those days

[Anonymous Coward]

'Crackheaded' is a great description. I was selling Sun and other datacenter type equipment and man I'd go on a sales call, meet with a bunch of dorks with brand new BMW's while half the office is playing fooseball and they'd want two new E10K's ASAP. Of course we'd probe into what they do and why they want them and often the reason was because the scumbag dumbass VC's LOVED companies with big iron. Now these dudes expected to make their money through site advertising and other foolish little things. Hey as long as they had the credit, we hooked em up!

About the Dot Bombs...

[devphaeton]

I know a lot of folks look back on that and scoff, and say "eBusiness/The Internet has `failed'" and stuff...

Well, at least as far as I can tell, most of the stuff that has bailed out was stupid, superfluous, overly flashy, or otherwise destined for failure anyways.

Any of the *real* sorts of eCommerce/eBusiness stuff seems to be doing quite well, such as Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, ebay, google, slashdot, etc...

In short, I think that people who follow media hype are stupid.

Re:About the Dot Bombs...

[nine-times]

Well, at least as far as I can tell, most of the stuff that has bailed out was stupid, superfluous, overly flashy, or otherwise destined for failure anyways.

Sounds pretty much right to me. Seems like a lot of the ventures that failed consisted of people who didn't understand the potential of the internet selling business proposals to other people who didn't understand the internet at all. They were crappy business proposals that would have been thrown out immediately, but because it had the work "internet" somewhere in there, and "internet" was the magic ingredient that always made money, everyone blindly went along.

So you end up mostly with companies who follow one of three models:

1. Companies like Dell and Barns & Noble, who already had successful businesses, adding an additional distribution channel
2. Companies like Amazon.com and ebay, who, for the most part, function as an extremely comprehensive mail-order catalogue with good search capabilities
3. Sites like Slashdot and Fark, or media sites like Cnet or CNN. Basically, sites that offer news, reviews, and cheap content and support themselves through advertising, usually banner ads of some kind.

Maybe there are exceptions. I guess you could add another category for "search engines", but the failure ratio of those are high. Yahoo and Google made it through, but that's about it. Plus, both of those sites border on the 3rd category, so I'm not sure where to put them.

iTMS-- does it count as a dot-com? It's not really a web site, and it might be category 1, since it's a new distribution channel for an existing business. But also it doesn't make money for itself, so it's a funny example.

But yeah, a whole lot of these businesses were ill-conceived silliness banking on those magic internets to generate money out of nowhere.

You guys CAN slow down the slide show

[L0phtpDK]

Look up top... see the blue bar with large Forbes log... ahh what is this next to it? "Previous... Slower... ah ha!" I am no medical genious, but I beleive that this button may make the slide show move slower.

Re:slightly off topic

[AtariAmarok]

"A bunch of radio stations in LA are running Super Bowl contests, but they can't use the term "Super Bowl". They have to call it The Big Game or something to that effect"

I'm pretty sure that the case is, any time someone has some promotion tied to the Superbowl, they have to pay for it.

It seems to go beyond that, however. I recall a "Green Lantern" comic years ago in which the plot involved the Super Bowl. It was called "The Bowl" through the entire thing. I guess they want to be paid for stories about the Superbowl too.

Not the full ads...

[John3]

Too bad they only are showing little snippets of the ads. I would have liked to see the full ads...for those who are seeing them for the first time it's tough to figure out some of the commercials. For example, the eTrade monkey ad with the "Deliverance" guys clapping along wasn't really funny until you saw the ending tagline "Well, we just blew $3 million dollars". In fact, with that tagline it's even funnier now. :-)

There are a few more classic eTrade commercials here (bottom of the article), including the "Money coming out the wazoo" ad.

Advertising perspective

[Lord_Dweomer]

Let me explain something to slashdotters about buying time in the Superbowl from an advertising perspective (yes, I'm in the industry). The Superbowl is expensive as hell, I believe current 30 sec. slots go for 2.4 mil. Unless you are a BIG company with that kind of money to toss around, you should NOT be in the Superbowl unless you are ready to risk it all.

Reading AdAge (industry publication) it is interesting to see that most of the spots that the companies are going to be airing are not product related spots, but rather branding spots. These are designed to increase your awareness of the brand, and to make you remember the company more. Branding of that scale is usually only best for companies that have an established foot print in the market place, and that have a customerbase who is already aware of their products.

Once you think about that for a bit, it is pretty obvious how foolish it was of the dotcoms to advertise during the Superbowl. Although I'm sure the media buyers and sellers that took part were MORE than happy to collect those commissions.

Re:Advertising perspective

[TheWizardOfCheese]

[...] Branding of that scale is usually only best for companies that have an established foot print in the market place, and that have a customerbase who is already aware of their products.

Once you think about that for a bit, it is pretty obvious how foolish it was of the dotcoms to advertise during the Superbowl. [...]

You have seen the trees but not the forest. During the bubble, Nortel ran endless branding ads. Why? Individual consumers did not buy their products. No, but they did buy their stock.

Once you consider that the true product of snakeoil.com is not snake oil, but SnakeOil stock, the picture snaps into focus. Advertising during the superbowl may have been unethical, it may have been bad timing, and it may have been unlucky, but it was not necessarily foolish.

Re:Advertising perspective

[nine-times]

So you are pretty much saying the goal of marketing is to separate consumers from rational thought regarding your product.

Yes, That's the goal that ad agencies set for themselves these days. Take a look at a coffee ad from the 50's. They'll show you a cup of coffee and tell you "Our brand has a deeper, richer flavor than our competitors."

Now look at a coffee commercial today. It'll show a couple sipping coffee, having a charming little romantic conversation. You won't see the coffee, you'll just see that the couple's drinking out of coffee cups. Nowhere in the commercial will it say anything about the coffee tasting good.

Around 20 years ago (I guess), advertisers started studying what inspired "brand loyalty" of the kind Apple enjoys today. They compared this brand loyalty to methods used by popular religions and successful cults (successful in creating devout followers, but including suicide cults). A pattern emerged.

The trick, apparently, is to try to get your marketing to do several things at once. Among them:

1. Make people familiar with your product and brand. Make an impression, and make it memorable. It's not so important that they know anything *specific* about your product, though-- knowing it's name is almost enough.
2. Create the impression of an appealing subculture. Present yourself as part of an oppressed minority, filled with misunderstood individuals who are cool or interesting or moral, or generally in some way "better" than the "masses".
3. Present your group (brand/religion/cult) as exclusive gate-keepers into this subculture. Basically, you're not "one of us" unless you own a Mac, or run Linux, or shop at the GAP, or drink Starbucks' coffee, or kill yourself drinking poisoned Kool-Aid (depending on the group).

If you can get people hooked on an appealing subculture, large numbers of those people will do some silly things to enter into that subculture, or even just to maintain their status as a "real" member. People will exhibit a general tendency to wear/eat/buy whatever is dictated by that subculture. Advertisers can then tap into this subculture whenever they want to tell you what to wear or where to hang out or what to eat (or whatever).

Oh brave new world with such people in it!

I really think all you guys should be lined up against a wall and shot.

What did I do? I'm just a helpdesk manager.

I could make a decent arguement that a lot of the things that are wrong with America are due to this philosophy of advertising.

I'd like to place at least some of the blame on the people who fall for it. This method wouldn't exist if it weren't so effective. And don't be too quick to think that you're so immune. You just might be so integrated into your advertisement prescribed subculture that you think your subculture is "normal".

Stupid me

[Tablizer]

During the dot-com heyday, many of us secretly agreed that it would probably mostly crash and burn one day. Even a co-inventor of the Internet was predicting a crash. I once lightly entertained the idea of making screenshots of some of the more extreme sites with their wacky melted-plastic punk look as kind of a dot-com scrap book.

If I had bothered to go through with the idea, then I could have created a "Dot-com memory lane" website that would have pretty good traffic in which I could sell ad space.

I can just slap myself for not going through with it.

Re:Stupid me

[t_allardyce]

I remember predicting it wouldn't last too, it was just a gold rush for the few viable business ideas, the trouble was all the stupid PHB investors had no idea what it was all about and just pumped millions into it assuming it was the next biggest thing. 'gotta invest in a dot com' - Im no economics expert, but I don't see why most of these companies needed more than about $20,000 to get off to a decent start, also why anyone would need a separate net shop for separate things - amazon for example does well because they sell everything to anyone, anywhere, theres not really room in the world for more than a few giants like that.. anyone who wasted millions and lost deserved their stupidity.

Ultimate Marketing Technique

[Greyfox]

All that marketing didn't bring them much name recognition at all. If you want to remain the talk of the town for YEARS after your commercial, just fund a Janet Jackson nipple slip. Instead of the EDS herding cats commercial, they could have just stuck an big EDS sticker over Janet's errant nipple and they'd have been the talk of the town for YEARS! Yes, I forsee a time when nipple real estate is the most coveted... what? It already is? Damn, and I was going to patent the idea...

The Sock Puppet offended me!

[Saeger]

Personally, I thought that the Pets.com Sock Puppet was very offensive; it was obviously possessed by evil demon-seed and scared my innocent children half to death! All good christians know that socks are used for dirty masturbatory purposes and can cum to life!

Anyway, I am glad that this upcoming G-Rated SuperBowl wouldn't allow such a dirty puppet on-air! They even renamed the "Best Damn Sports Show Period" to the "The Best DARN Sports Show Period". God bless their hearts.

Re:Sports Guy on ESPN.com Page 2

[cp4]

Don't know why you posted AC... love the Sports Guy and I'm sure a lot of other slashdotters do as well.... the site looks cool, if a bit bare bones.

If any mods are fans as well, mod parent up. If you aren't, well start reading the Sports Guy!

Sports Guy's World

MacIntosh introduced in 1984 SuperBowl

[peter303]

The Apple Mac introduction is the most infamous techie & SuperBowl commercial. At the time people complained the commercial was too obscure, because it didnt show the product. Steve was secretive about the actual shape until the official introduction later in the year.

The 1985 commercial about the [ IBM ] suits marching off the cliff to their destruction was entertaining too.

Sooner or later...

[madmaxmedia]

The one thing about Super Bowl advertising is that it is the only advertising that is an event unto itself (did I say that right?)

I think there is an opportunity for a new company to use the Super Bowl to launch something. I mean, you could buy a million cheap radio spots and technically reach the same number of people with less money, but not create nearly as much impact (at least that's my guess, I've never run an ad in the Super Bowl.) But more often, it's a bigger company that launches something new- the Mac, Crystal Pepsi, etc.

But you better have something big and memorable to match your ad venue, besides just the fact that you are running a Super Bowl ad (and that you created a really catchy or funny ad.) I think that these companies got confused- they thought just running a Super Bowl ad would instantly make them 'big time', even if they actually had nothing noteworthy to sell or promote. Another poster mentioned what happened after the Computers.com ad, I can't imagine how those guys felt after they generated almost none of the response they bet their farm on.

So, to summarize, here's the 4 step plan to become as rich as Bill Gates:
1. Develop something totally new and cool that people will need or crave.
2. Develop cool or funny TV commercial.
3. Advertise on the Super Bowl.
4. Watch the orders roll in!

Too bad everyone forgot step 1!

Prick for Day

[Tablizer]

was selling Sun and other datacenter type equipment and man I'd go on a sales call, meet with a bunch of dorks with brand new BMW's while half the office is playing fooseball and they'd want two new E10K's ASAP.

One of these days somebody is going to make a pretty entertaining movie about the dot-com madness that includes the best of the late 90's music as a soundtrack. It is one of those things that happens once every century.

It was about 12 or so years after the end of the Vietnam war that all the 'Nam movies came out. Thus, expect some dot-com nastalgia movies around 2012 or so.

Re:so whats in the 2005 superbowl?

[Ahnteis]

Or watch it on budweiser's site.

What a Horrid Site

[Bob Uhl]

Dear God in Heaven, that has to be the worst article (not the summary, which I enjoyed) I have ever read. I read the intro blurb, and then look aroudn for a button reading 'more' or 'next' or 'this way to the egress.' Only after mistakenly following another link do I discover that it's the ad-banner-shaped JPEG. Yeah, guys: hide a navigation device the one place any web reader ignores by default.

Then the slideshow starts, and I glance away at my other box to do some more work--only to discover that it's done. It automatically changes slides, unlike every other gallery and in fact site on the Internet, which lets one choose when to change pages. Peeved, I click 'previous' a dozen times (they don't give one a 'first' button), then quickly hit 'stop' (yeah, thanks for making me work at this, forbes.com). I read the first slide, chuckle and hit 'next.' The next slide appears, and as I'm reading it, it changes: they don't remember that one wants the show to be stopped!

What sort of microcephalic twit would think this is a good browsing experience?

Re:What a Horrid Site

[DrDebug]

I was merrily following the link to the slideshow, when I discovered that I needed to install the RealPlayer plugin. That ended that quest.

Realplayer is known for it's spyware and other system pollution. I will never put Realplayer product on a system ever again.

Forbes' short memory

[amightywind]

I find it interesting that Forbes casts the dotcom bubble in such a negative light when at the time they were the formost cheerleader of the worst episode corporate corruption in 60 years. No hypocracy there.