Claria Corporation: Онлайн жарнама және жеке ақпаратты жинау туралы даулы тарих

American software company

Claria Corporation (formerly Gator Corporation) was a software company based in Redwood City, California that invented “Behavioral Marketing”, a new form of online advertising. It was founded in 1998 by Denis Coleman (co founder of Symantec), Stanford MBA Sasha Zorovic, and engineer Mark Pennell, based on work Zorovic had done at Stanford. In March 1999 Jeff McFadden was hired as CEO and Zorovic was effectively forced out. Its name was later used interchangeably with its Gain advertising network, which it claimed serviced over 50 million users. Claria exited the adware business at the end of second quarter 2006, and eventually shut down completely in October 2008. The "Gator" (also known as Gain AdServer) products collected personal information from its unknowing users, including websites visited and portions of credit card numbers to target and display ads on the computers of web surfers. It billed itself as the "leader in online behavioral marketing". The company changed its name to Claria Corporation on October 30, 2003 in an effort to "better communicate the expanding breadth of offerings that [they] provide to consumers and advertisers", according to CEO and President Jeff McFadden.

Originally released in 1999, Gator was most frequently installed together with programs being offered free of charge, such as Go!Zilla, or Kazaa. Even though Gator was installed with an uninstall available via Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel on Microsoft Windows, many spyware removal tools can also detect and remove it. Gator's end user license agreement attempted to disallow its manual removal by prohibiting "unauthorized means" of uninstallation. Most of the lawsuits were settled out of court in February 2003. Gator attempted to combat spyware labels with litigation. In September 2003 the company threatened sites such as PC Pitstop with libel lawsuits. As part of a settlement signed Sept. 30, (2003), PC Pitstop which scans computers for hostile and otherwise undesirable code removed pages from its Spyware Information Center with such titles as "Is Gator Spyware?" and the "Gator Boycott List." In February 2004, Gator made a confidential settlement of litigation brought against it by seven top newspaper publishers, including The Washington Post, the New York Post, The New York Times, and Dow Jones. The Washington Post, L. L. Bean and Extended Stay America suits were similarly settled.

Despite its unpopular reputation, Claria Corporation received backing from major venture capital firms, including Greylock, Technology Crossover Ventures, and U. S. Venture Partners. Andy Bechtolsheim was an early investor. They filed for a $150 million IPO in April 2004, stating income of $35 million on revenues of $90 million in 2003. Investors were concerned that its practices might be illegal, at least in Utah at the time. Another concern was that most revenue came from one partner: Yahoo Overture. Claria withdrew the filing in August 2004.

In July 2005, Microsoft Corporation came under fire when it revealed that their anti spyware product would no longer quarantine Claria software as "spyware" (though it still offered users the option to remove the software). Microsoft was reportedly contemplating the purchase of Claria, which many consumers felt to be a conflict of interest. Other spyware reporting agencies, such as Computer Associates and Panda Software's TruPrevent Technologies, still label Claria products as both adware and spyware. In March 2006, Claria claimed that it would be exiting the adware business and focusing on personalized search technology. On July 1, 2006, Claria ceased displaying pop up ads. Around this time, a new company NebuAd was formed with some former Claria employees with another approach to targeted advertisements. On April 21, 2008, Claria sold the gator. com domain. In October 2008, rebranded as Jelly Cloud, the company quietly shut down. Today, Claria's former senior management team occupy a variety of leadership roles throughout the online marketing industry. Scott VanDeVelde, Claria's last CEO and former Chief Revenue Officer, is now Chief Revenue Officer at Dotomi, an online advertising firm specializing in personalized media. Scott Eagle, Claria's former Chief Operating Officer and Chief Marketing Officer, joined eHarmony, an online dating company, as Chief Marketing Officer. Former CEO Jeff McFadden is now a VP of Business Development at Zen Marketing. The former VP of Business Development Mitchell Weisman is now part of the leadership team at LifeStreet Corporation, the largest ad network on Facebook. Tony Martin, Claria's former VP of Engineering, ran engineering and operations at Project Playlist. Claria's former VP Engineering and Analytics, Dominic Bennett, and Claria's Senior Director of Finance Dennis Jang, are now part of the leadership team at Turn, a leading online advertising DSP, as VP Engineering and VP Finance respectively. Co founder and former Claria CTO Mark Pennell is now a senior software engineer at Apple. As of 2016, most of Claria's core engineering team work for Apple.