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Microsoft In Talks To Buy Claria
axonis writes "For the last two weeks, Microsoft has been in talks to buy Claria, an adware marketer formerly called Gator, and best known for its pop-up ads and software that tracks people visiting Web sites. The offer price on the table as recently as Wednesday was $500 million. One person briefed on the deal said there was opposition within Microsoft to the acquisition. Analysts said Microsoft would probably be most interested in the long-term potential of Claria's personalization software rather than its pop-up ads."
Microsofts Antispyware's cred just took a dive for no fault of its own. Pity, since Giant (which it was before MS purchased it) was one of the better antispyware apps.
Go somewhere random
Yes, let's reward these companies for their abuses of the internet. 500 million reasons to be unscrupulous in business. This is going to make spyware/adware that much worse. Yea, let's here it for best business practices!!! /rant
"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits." -- Albert Einstein
> One person briefed on the deal said there was opposition within Microsoft to the acquisition.
;)
Would that be from the AntiSpyware group?
-- OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.com
I wonder if this buyout is just a way for Microsoft to kill off a whole slew of spyware? Seems to me that 500 million is a fair price to rid us of Claria's crap.
Gorkman
This rumor defies logic. By acquiring a spyware maker, no matter whether or not they intend to use the spyware themselves, Microsoft would seriously endanger their efforts to gain credibility among technical users.
Claria is 'fruit of the poisoned tree'.
Typically, acquisitions like this are done because it's cheaper to buy target company A then it is to develop a solution internally, and any competent business manager should be taking into account the 'cost' of associating Microsoft with a company with Claria's history.
I would guess that the story is a plant, and that someone fell for it. Was the purpose of the plant to expose leakers? Or was it a well orchestrated prank? Either way, it seems contra-indicated for good business, and successful business is Microsoft's #1 product.
buy the technology BEHIND the popups, making them easier to block... (yeah right)...
There is no "technology behind popups". It's trivial.
The technology is in personalization of content. Adware companies are actually somewhat advanced in this area. Data-mining and such.
Everything you said was absurd. If MS wanted to the popups you mentioned you think they'd have to pay $500M for the "technology"? Are you an idiot or just daft? I could write that program in 15 minutes, as could any decent programmer.
I hope you are kidding.
Marketing value is worth a lot. People still haven't caught on that Google's largest asset is the huge marketing knowledge they have access to both directly and indirectly (searches); the text ads are cute but not the main show. You'll see.
Number of times in the entire history of the world that buying off thugs has ever made them go away: 0
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What better way to shut down a company that produces so much spyware and other unwanted adds than to buy them.
Sends out the wrong sort of message when they buy them for $500 million though.
Another one bites the dust
actually, i see no problem with embedding something into the windows kernel to check if it's a legal copy. you can't get security patches for XP unless you have a legal copy, so what's the point of having it if you're susceptible to most of that crap that's floating around?
while MS wouldn't pay that much to stop them from harassing people, they would pay that much to get the code to the software to make their anti-spyware solution the best. they would also pay that much to get the data that claria has collected in order to make their own web stuff better. think about all the browsing habits claria has collected from people (the average person, in fact). they could easily use that data to help push them ahead of google.
please me, have no regrets.