BusinessWeek profiles Direct Revenue, a spyware company that employed 100 people in a fashionable SoHo NYC loft, now under fire from NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.. The article is fascinating, detailing the way that Direct Revenue came into being, and how it has always chosen to increase its sleaze level when doing so would increase its profitability. My big shocker was that this company — which has infected 100 million computers — has only made $100 million. In other words, all the misery caused by this company's crapware only nets it $1 per customer, but can cost hundreds of dollars in lost productivity and service center calls.
From early on, a small group of programmers at Direct Revenue focused on how to protect their employer's programs once they were lodged in a computer, current and former employees say. The team called itself Dark Arts after the term for evil magic in the Harry Potter series. One of the biggest threats Dark Arts addressed came from competing software. The presence of multiple spyware programs can so cripple a computer that no ads manage to get seen.
Dark Arts crafted software "torpedoes" that blasted rival spyware off computers' hard drives. Competitors aimed similar weapons back at Direct Revenue's software, but few could match the wizardry of Dark Arts. One adversary, Avenue Media, filed suit in federal court in Seattle in 2004, alleging that in a matter of days, Direct Revenue torpedoes had cut in half the number of people using one of Avenue Media's programs. The suit settled without money changing hands, according to an attorney for Avenue Media, which is based in Curaçao. "This is ad warfare," explains former Direct Revenue product manager Reza Khan. "Only the toughest and stickiest codes survive."
(via /.)
