History
The company was founded as Infospace in March 1996 by Naveen Jain after he left Microsoft. He served as CEO until 2000. The company, which started with six employees, built an online yellow pages service to be funded through advertising. A set of simple chat rooms (based on HTML and meta refresh) were also available on the site.
InfoSpace went public on December 15, 1998. The company raised $75 million in the offering.
In July 2000, InfoSpace acquired Go2Net. After the merger, Go2Net CEO Russell Horowitz became president of Infospace.
Also, in 2000, InfoSpace used a controversial accounting method to report $46 million in profits when in fact it had lost $282 million. Company executives skirted SEC trading restrictions to sell large blocks of their personal stock.
Jain resumed the role of CEO in 2001, but was forced out by InfoSpace's board as chairman and CEO in December 2002.
By June 2002, the company's stock price, which reached $1,305 in March 2000, had dropped to $2.67.
Read more about this topic: Info Space
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