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Dot Con: How Infospace Took Investors For A Ride
Jeff writes "On the subject of the dot com crash, the Seattle Times recently ran an outstanding three day series on the corruption at Infospace, with a follow up today on the company's continued relations with its founder, Naveen Jain. Sunday's cover photo of Jain's new office shows a birthday photo of himself and another self-portrait in the background. Only the reflecting pool is missing."
I can't figure out why either company matters, what the hell this has to do with GNU, Linux, GNU/Linux, the F/OSS community, iPods, Eugenia from OS News, or Microsoft. It's not a MySQL story. Nobody's hammering the Mozilla Foundation. Firefox isn't even mentioned. And there's no question at the end like "what does this mean for Google's world domination plans?"
I'm sorry, man, I just don't know what to make of this article.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
I'm still pissed that I lost the money I invested in Infospace. Oh well, I hope to make a large return from the money I've invested in CherryOS and the Phantom console.
Yeah, but the way this stuff reads they're companies along the lines of Enron. Shuffling investor money around to report as revenue and then running away with a fortune before the truth hits.
It's not that investors are greedy, they're like you and me and would like a good return on their money and are attracted to businesses which seem to be doing it better than others. Where they fail is in doing good research on the company or actually being defrauded.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Their technical lead proudly described the amazing fast database system he'd written to handle full-text search, because none of the commercial DB engines could possibly be fast enough.
He was using binary search to look through what he was estimating would be about a million records on disk.
Perhaps it was a mistake to explain that using a hash table would find the correct record in an average of 1.5 disk hits, as opposed to the 19 that his system was taking, because they didn't offer me a job. Then, again, maybe it wasn't a mistake-- after all, I didn't end up working there.
I don't care about any "reflection pools". I want that 24"+ widescreen LCD monitor you can see in the reflection!
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
It's OK. Post the exact same story. We're used to dupes.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
This image displays three desks in this man's office. Yet I don't see any electronic device more complex than a telephone. Um.... He ran a tech firm?
"Ain't I a stinka..." - Bugs
exactly they're like you and me. They're greedy What would we not do to make money? I could even think of starting a major software company, sell lousy programs I didn't write on my own if I made money on it. Wonder how come no one came up with that idea before...
I can now stop time, but the effect is only temporary
If you consider that he just wanted to be like Bill Gates and he achieved that by being a cunning and ruthless manipulator. Only difference is he is going to go to jail.
Why all the sympathy?
It's their world; and if they need sympathy, they'll get it - after all, they've invested much time and resources in creating and sustaining our objective, "consensual" reality.
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste
"The only clear view is from atop the mountain of our dead selves." - Peter Carroll
I'm a (bitter) former InfoSpace employee.
I was a member of the famed wireless division, who was all laid off because we didn't make the company any money. This was after Jain et al took the company for a ride and nearly got us delisted. I disliked senior management, but my peers at the company were some of the best people I've ever known or worked with, and I still miss that environment.
Whenever Naveen or Anu (his wife) would get infront of the company and speak, I instantly felt slimy. I got the worst vibes from the man. He honestly thinks he's a fantastic person and was the best thing to ever happen for the company and anyone involved. I hope they have fun explaining to their children how they robbed their trust funds in their insider trading scandal.
Shortly after my last day in December 2003, the entire executive board was replaced. Now InfoSpace is posting good numbers and wireless makes money.
Coincidence? I think not.
Don't sweat it - he's just trolling. "Investor" is not a bad word. Unlike, say, "lawyer"...
So I guess the lesson is that the stock market is a con job and capitalism sucks?
Yeah, we'd like to see the editors do that, too!
Yuk yuk! Ah, the obvious ones are the funniest ones.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
The real reason there isn't the incredible outcry over conmen like Bernie Ebbers, Ken Lay, and the man linked is because people don't realize that they, too, are part of the "investor class." Many people think that Enron's failure resulted in nothing more than a few robber barons transplanted from the 19th century having to switch their Cuban cigars to Dominican; they don't realize that they are being hit in the pocketbook, and that people who invested large amounts their life's savings were taken for a ride.
As for investors not doing enough research, that's simply not true. If you will remember, it was a fairly large scandal a few months ago that stock analysts - people who are hired by brokerages to deliver an unbiased analysis - were rating stocks highly, but privately commenting that those stocks weren't worth the paper their certificates were printed on. The end result was that investors who did everything "right" and read all the research available were actually more likely to get ripped off than someone who simply picked stocks because they had a cool-sounding name.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
I apologize for posting this AC, for obvious reasons.
.com imperative that I can't recall.
I first met Naveen Jain while he was still with Microsoft. It was 1995, and Naveen was telling a bunch of Time Inc. New Media honchos (the folks that brought the world Pathfinder - remember that? First commercial website?) that the Internet was _dead_.
It seems that Microsoft was intent on replacing all Internet technologies with its own "embraced and extended" versions. A binary version of HTML that allowed for 8 different types of hyperlinks. IRC, but with additional functions. That kind of thing. Pathfinder would be extinguished as the commercial Internet baby was stabbed in the cradle by the upcoming "Winternet". No kidding, he used that term.
The Time Inc. honchos ponied up a huge sum to get Pathfinder's url on the upcoming MSN. In classic Microsoft style, they took the money, and then hid the icon several levels of navigation down. No one ever saw it, but then again, MSN 1.0 had very few users anyway.
Naveen started Infospace, and I was sent on a fact-finding group mission to see if Pathfinder wanted to use their technology. Their office looked like a dump - they didn't have a data center, they had a huge mass of PCs piled almost randomly, hooked to the Internet. That was Infospace in '96/'97. They were so arrogant that they thought that'd impress the folks from Time Inc, who served Pathfinder on Sun (and only Sun), and had a datacenter that was a model of datacenters. I remember Time Inc. sysadmins' argument about whether the faraday cage was constructed correctly... but I digress.
At any rate, the best part of the tour was Jean-Remy showing off all of their home-grown technology. He claimed that _everything_ was home grown - database servers, DNS, web, even the operating system (!). In fact, he confided to me that he had "borrowed the best pieces of NT", including the kernel, in creating their home-grown operating system. And as others have said, he bragged endlessly about how his database was faster than Oracle.
As before, Time Inc. drank the Kool-Aid and signed up with Infospace - despite these kinds of issues - because they thought that they had to do so, for some stupid
Naveen Jain is an amazing huckster, I'll give him that. Pity that he escaped the SEC's special brand of torture.
to go for a ride.
Naveen Jain seems to be at the reins, making a company that directly competed with his previous company incite a war, make Infospace come to an agreement. And now they are partners, with Naveen Jain still getting paid in essence by Infospace, regardless of his current companys success or lack thereof.
If Infospace had any brains they would get rid of all affiliation with its former founder where he obviously knows how to play his cards. Which has never been good news for Infospace in the past, and likely not in the future.
[cx]
Of course, if the data was flat, rather than relational, the choices would have been Berkeley DB, Gnu DBM and NDBM, which all store data by hashes.
Binary trees are great for high-school projects. Now, trees are used in serious projects. Game AIs tend to use B+ and B* trees, for example. I'm pretty sure ReiserFS uses trees. One way to write a compiler parser is via an n-ary tree, because the memory and CPU requirements scale much nicer than hash tables. However, none of these are binary trees, they exploit some very specific characteristics of the data, and they aren't intended as a substitute for Oracle.
People do write their own database engines, but usually only for very specialized needs. I am sure there are plenty of applications out there which are simply not suitable for any existing engine, for reasons of speed, complexity, or whatever.
From what I understand, Infospace did not have such a need. From what others have said, I doubt anyone working there would have recognized such a need, if one HAD existed.
It is utter insanity to build a system that is inefficient and unsuitable as a replacement for something that is utterly different in nature. The guy probably swapped his Rottweiler guard dog for a guinea pig, too. Hey, they both make noises and the guinea pig IS cheaper!
I'll tell you why the Dot Com era went broke. It had nothing to do with technology or expectations. It had to do with rich idiots giving money to wannabe rich idiots so that they could all be fleeced and the consumers with them.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I think we are starting to realize that after the .com boom, bust and now resurgence these businesses are just like all other businesses. You will find the rebel upstarts who do rocket to fame and fortune, the solid business model, and the Enron type corruption.
During the boom it seemed the .coms were beyond real business....almost "magical". The sector is maturing and along with this comes all the problems that have plagued business since time began because behind all the slick tech are people, common ordinary imperfect people (sorta like Soylent Green----IT"S PEOPLE!!!)
I do think that there will be good times to come in the tech sector, but this will need to be founded on the same fundamentals that all successful businesses require.
"We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. " Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
next thing you know, they'll merge and form intelija, inc. or some shit like that.
wake me up when they're shipping a product, not dedicating their lives to service.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The real reason there isn't the incredible outcry over conmen like Bernie Ebbers, Ken Lay, and the man linked is because people don't realize that they, too, are part of the "investor class."
Why do you say that?
Aren't these men employees of these companies?
It seems to me the problem is that shareholders have basically given control of their companies to people that go on to pay themselves huge amounts of money at the expense of everyone else.
And why shouldn't they? They aren't investors in the company. They don't have an interest in the long term future of the company because they can make the company pay them big money RIGHT NOW.
That building you see out his window is the one I work in. I drink starbucks in their building on a regular basis...
privatized social security is equivalent to no social security. Why does George Bush think it's a good idea for the government to entrust Wall Street with the responsibility for securing the social status of all Americans?
Is he...
a) too young to remember the 1929 crash?
b) too stupid to see what's going on around him?
c) just a puppet on a string?
d) a greedy mofo planning to cash in somehow?
e) a samsquamch?
It's OK. Post the exact same story. We're used to dupes.
If that photograph (where Jain is holding the bow) was taken at the building in Bellevue, WA where I believe it was, then the building that's visible in the background is Valve Software's headquarters across from Bellevue Square.
Yeap, it looks like the Citidel alright...
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
They had a channel on AvantGo, so every day I'd have updated tech news on my Palm Pilot.
It was absolute garbage
. It seemed like it was being written by an intern surfing CNET in the mornings, then writing the stories from memory in the afternoons, whilst watching MTV.I removed the channel!
Um, i'm pretty sure he meant the pronoun they in:
"people don't realize that they, too, are part of the "investor class.""
refers to the people, not to Ebers, Lay, etc.
People don't realize that they [themselves], too, are part of the "investor class."
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Wait, you're right, they should just lend out money to companies that might loose it for nothing. Lending a company money and then asking for them to share in the profits once the money you lent them starts making them money is greedy and vile.
Think first
RandomAndInteresting.comdefending the world from stupidity since 1979
(Sorry, I meant SCOXE)
The Raven
Someone in the blogosphere claimed that in the close-knit gossipy Silicon Valley community, a dishonest CEO would get bounced out and become unemployable before doing much damage. The claim is that there's zero tolerance for anything more unethical than insider trading.
Anyone from the Valley care to comment? Seems to me that I remember someone who cheated his garage partner and is a CEO today. If someone is making money for investors, or creating the illusion of making money for investors, can s/he really get blackballed?
If there's really something about the Northwest that makes scandals more likely, then what exactly is the difference?
It all depends on how quick the developer was and how dirty the code was. Oracle is expensive, and MySQL and Postgres were not nearly as advanced as they are now in 1995-8 when this custom DB was written.
His tree system could have been written in just a week or so, and if they only had simple data structures it might have been cheaper then Oracle. OTOH, using a real RDBMS would have allowed them to be much more flexable in what they created, and they could always have simply thrown hardware at the situation if it was too slow.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
"I'm sorry, man, I just don't know what to make of this article."
It's the slashdot equivalent of Mad Magazine's "Spy vs. Spy".
('Cept it sounds more like "Moron vs. Moron")
Need Mercedes parts ?
Like most of the instant millionaires, [Jean-Remy] Facq and the others were not able to sell their stock for six months. But that didn't mean they couldn't start shopping.
... Not to be outdone, Facq two days later walked into a dealership and wrote a salesman a $1.1 million check to buy a Lamborghini Diablo and a Ferrari F50. "I just wanted to see the look on his face," Facq said ... Anything Facq wanted, he could have. Disappointed by the jewelry at Tiffany & Co. -- "I wanted something more pimpish" -- Facq designed enormous rings and commissioned a jeweler to make them. He called himself the "Lord of the Rings."
A month after InfoSpace went public, Facq ordered a $103,000 Dodge Viper. He shipped the Viper to Hawaii, where he commissioned an artist to paint its hood with a Hawaiian scene -- the sun setting over dolphins cavorting in blue waters. Tab for the paint job: $150,000
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
"Don't sweat it - he's just trolling. "Investor" is not a bad word. Unlike, say, "lawyer"..."
Your lawyer is a bad word. Mine is great.
Need Mercedes parts ?
The federal class-action suit was settled last year for $34.3 million.
In December, Jain and more than a dozen key InfoSpace officials settled the Dreiling lawsuit, with Jain agreeing to pay $3 million. Others are paying $3.4 million. InfoSpace's insurance, covering executive misdeeds, is paying up to $43 million to settle outstanding lawsuits.
As part of the settlement, Dreiling, Jain and the former InfoSpace executives signed confidentiality agreements and will not comment.
That's it. What bullshit. Didn't he make hundreds of millions ?
Good to know you decide whether to trust people or not based on how they look. Let me start a shell company with a supermodel for a front that you can invest your life savings in.
Investors dont want the type of abuse and deceit that goes on in corporate board rooms. The ones profiting are the Heads of the companies. They just use "the investors" as a convient execuse to mask their immoral behavior.
Terraserver Link
The front yard seems to have been turned into a parking lot. Bummer.
That's it - his new office appears to be separated from Infospaces offices by at most a few floors.
You do know that oracle gives you the choice between b-tree and hashed indexes don't you? You need to be a database designer to take advantage of any database engine properly, no matter which one it is.
Apart from that, you're bang on about the rest of it, especially the rest of it. The only difference between net-enabled businesses and others is communication. If the company can't explain how they leverage that, they're a no-hoper.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Watch Dot Con, a Frontline episode dedicated showing how corporate America cajoled the media into feeding a runaway train of hype which bilked billions.
Grocery deliveries are one of the big internet successes here in the UK - most of the food supermarkets do it.
Note how this guy and Ken Lay and others walk free. Do you really think they will get around to doing anything to Lay? LOL!
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's