"I just got off the phone with Keith Teare, the former CEO of RealNames. He sent an email explaining that the company will shut down on Monday, and sent a pointer to his personal site, where he explains how that happened. Here’s the story in Teare’s own words."
Ok, so Realnames former CEO is pissed off at Microsoft because they chose not to renew a contract. Microsoft is now allegedly working on a similar concept. Well, who got RealNames to rely on just one deal with a partner in the first place? (Whining, nasal voice) "I put my head in the oven, how is it my hair’s on fire?"
Google has been doing quite fine by themselves. No doubt the Yahoo deal helped them accelerate their growth, but they didn’t absolutely need it to make it. Likewise, other companies (admittedly on different scales), from Napster to Blogger, didn’t need to rely on piggy-backing the browser to exist. Reality check for RealNames: if anyone cared about your service, you wouldn’t be publicly whining about a private contract now (what a shame, good luck finding a job now.) And if your service is so valuable, just propose a browser-addon for download (look at the increasing number of referrers through the Google toolbar).
I wonder how many other useless dot coms are still somewhat floating thanks to contracts about to expire. I guess it’s just a matter of months for the cleansing to end.
Ok, easy bronco, I don’t need to be so riled up on a Monday morning!
15/05/02: blog PR, it only costs $40 to appear as a loser in front of 100,000 people in just 2 days!