After more than a year's effort, the once-hot push technology pioneer PointCast has finally found a buyer.
The new owner is San Diego-based Launchpad Technology, one of the many Internet start-ups established by idealab in Pasadena, Calif.
Launchpad developed eWallet software for PCs and is involved on the payment side of electronic commerce.
The company will integrate PointCast technology with the eWallet tools. PointCast is known for broadcasting news from hundreds of sources to subscribers' PCs. However, Launchpad will use PointCast's technology to push information of new products and sales from online merchants to customers.
Investor Bill Gross, head of idealab, did not state the price of the acquisition. Figures ranging from $7 million to $10 million have been floated in various published reports. If the price is that modest, it is evidence of PointCast's lost luster. In 1996, Rupert Murcoch's News Group reportedly offered $400 million for the company. PointCast founder Chris Hassett turned down the offer and subsequently left the company in 1997.
PointCast was founded in 1992 and soon achieved icon status, like that of Amazon.com today. At that time, push was even hailed as browser killer. However the technology soon became unpopular among IT managers because it periodically gulped bandwidth in order to update the client screens. Some companies even banned the use of PointCast, which later updated its technology to solve this problem. However, the server software was not free like the client software.
Today, pull technology has become popular, as people apparently prefer to receive news by e-mail instead of being flooded constantly by news accompanied by advertisements. Furthermore, users are more partial to the browsers today than they are to PointCast's proprietary software.
PointCast is now working on Web-based software, but the software hasn't yet had an effect on the company's fortunes. Recently PointCast had to lay off 75 people, a third of its employees. In March, CEO David Dorman left for another company.
Idealabs' Gross is presently head of Launchpad. Gross expects more of his companies, such as dToys, City Search and Tickets.com, to make use of what he clls the next generation of PointCast services. Compaq Chairman Ben Rosen is also an investor in idealab.
PointCast, which is also established in UK and Germany, will continue delivering its traditional news services.
RELATED LINKS
Network World, 09/28/98
Whither push technology?
Network World, 8/03/98
