PointCast
PointCast was a dot-com company founded in 1992 by Christopher R. Hassett in Sunnyvale, California.
PointCast Network
The company's initial product amounted to a screensaver that displayed news and other information, delivered live over the Internet. The PointCast Network used push technology, which was a hot concept at the time, and received enormous press coverage when it launched in beta form on February 13, 1996.[1] The product did not perform as well as expected, often mistakenly believed to be in part because its traffic burdened corporate networks with excessive bandwidth use, and was banned in many places.[2] It demanded more bandwidth than the home dial-up Internet connections of the day could provide, and people objected to the large number of advertisements that were pushed over the service as well.[3] Pointcast offered corporations a proxy server that would dramatically reduce the bandwidth used. But even this didn't help save PointCast. A more likely reason than bandwidth was the increasing popularity of "portal websites". When PointCast first started Yahoo offered little more than a hierarchical structure on the internet (broken down by subject much like DMOZ ) but was soon to introduce the portal which was customizable and offered a much more customizable way to read the news. People enjoyed the graphics in PoinCast, even the ads were popular, they gave users a taste of what was to come with Adobe Flash.
Along with the increasing popularity of portals like Yahoo PointCase suffered a management crisis. At the peak of the dot-com bubble the priorities shifted away from innovation (Wired Magazine ran a cover of Chris Hassett). After Ruport Murdoch’s offer to buy Pointcast for upward of $450M in 1997 (which Chris Hassett turned down) the company started to disintegrate, the good engineers left in droves. David Dorman took over as CEO but was never engaged in the technology, he didn't even have a computer on his desk and had little to no understanding of the emerging internet. This was the final nail in the coffin for what PointCast had been.
News Corporation purchase offer and change of CEO
At its height in January 1997, News Corporation made an offer of $450 million to purchase the company. However, the offer was withdrawn in March. While there were rumors that it was withdrawn due to issues with the price and revenue projections, James Murdoch said it was due to PointCast's inaction.[4][5]
Shortly after not accepting the purchase offer, the board of directors decided to replace Christopher Hassett as the CEO. Some reasons included turning down the recent purchase offer, software performance problems (using too much corporate bandwidth) and declining market share (lost to the then-emerging Web portal sites.) After five months, David Dorman was chosen as the new CEO. In an effort to raise more capital, Dorman planned to take the company public. A filing was made in May 1998 with a valuation of $250 million. This plan was abandoned after two months in favor of looking for a company with whom to partner or be acquired.[5]
Project Newnet
In August 1998, PointCast found such a partner. In order to compete with @Home, a consortium of telephone companies and Microsoft put together a project designed to promote use of DSL in preference to cable modems. The project was dubbed "Newnet" and the plan was to use PointCast's software as a portal for the service. The consortium planned to buy PointCast for $100 million as part of the deal. The deal was signed in December 1998 with the intent of launching the service in April 1999.[5][6]
Due to delays in the project, Dorman resigned as CEO in March 1999. Two weeks later PointCast were informed that their planned acquisition had been scrapped. In the reorganization that followed, 75 of the 220 employees were let go in an effort to reduce costs.[7] A number of bids were made to buy the company including two from former CEO Christopher Hassett, which were rejected.[8][9]
Instead, they sold out for about $7 million in May 1999 to Launchpad Technologies, Inc., a San Diego company founded and backed by Idealab, and the PointCast network was shut down the next year.[3][4][10]
EntryPoint
Launchpad's eWallet product was combined with the existing PointCast technology to create EntryPoint, which had a free desktop toolbar and offered customized news, stocks and sports feeds.[11] The new client abandoned push technology, resulting in much more economical use of network bandwidth.
Infogate
EntryPoint merged with Internet Financial Network in 2000 forming Infogate, continuing the same free service until switching to a fee-based co-branded model, partnering with news outlets such as USA Today and CNN. Infogate was sold to AOL Time Warner in March 2003. Infogate's senior executives — Cliff Boro, Vidar Vignisson, and Tom Broadhead – formed CVT Ventures, LLC, a venture-development group dedicated to accelerating technology startups.
References
- ^ Aguilar, Rose (1996-02-13). "PointCast unveils free news service". News.com.
- ^ World Wide What? The Internet's 10 Worst Ideas - Fox News, May 17, 2010
- ^ a b Meyer, Katherine (2006-05-03). "The Best of the Worst". The Wall Street Journal.
- ^ a b Kawamoto, Dawn and Borland, John (1999-05-10). "PointCast acquired by Idealab". News.com.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ a b c Himelstein, Linda and Siklos, Richard (1999-04-26). "PointCast: The Rise and Fall of an Internet Star". BusinessWeek.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Smith, Tony (1998-12-03). "PointCast strategic investor becomes buyer". The Register.
- ^ Smith, Tony (1999-04-02). "PointCast sacks third of workforce". The Register.
- ^ Smith, Tony (1999-04-06). "PointCast ex-CEO looks to re-acquire company". The Register.
- ^ Smith, Tony (1999-04-21). "PointCast rejects founder's buy-back offer". The Register.
- ^ Lettice, John (1999-05-11). "PointCast bows out for a mere $7 million". The Register.
- ^ "Welcome To EntryPoint". Archived from the original on 1999-10-13. Retrieved 2008-01-11.