New Management and Company Restructuring
In December 2002, Jim Voelker took over Naveen Jain's role as Chairman, CEO and President of InfoSpace. Voelker quickly shut down or sold many of InfoSpace's 12 businesses, and focused on five core segments. In 2003, InfoSpace acquired Moviso from Vivendi Universal Net USA. Moviso provides ringtones, wallpapers and video games, usually accessed through a mobile handset enabling wireless carriers to charge a fee for these downloads. In early March 2003, InfoSpace sued Jain for allegedly violating noncompete agreements in his role at newly founded Intelius. In an interview after the suit was filed, Jain said the lawsuit was without merit and was a retaliation for Jain's whistle-blowing. In April 2003, he resigned from the InfoSpace board.
In 2004, InfoSpace acquired Switchboard, which is now owned by Verizon spin-off Idearc Media, and overshadowed by Idearc's SuperPages. It also moved into the mobile games space, acquiring Atlas Mobile, IOMO and elkware. InfoSpace reported $249 million in revenue in 2004 — up 89 percent from the previous year and more than Jain ever achieved in the company's dot-com heyday. September 2006, InfoSpace released news that a carrier partner would be working directly with major recording labels thus negatively impacting their core business. Following this carrier/label arrangement, InfoSpace sold the Moviso mobile content business to FunMobility, Atlas Mobile studio to Twistbox and IOMO re-emerged as FinBlade. The remaining portions of InfoSpace Mobile were acquired by Motricity in December 2007. Between May 2007 and January 2008, the company paid shareholders $500 million in special dividends, or $15.30/share.Infospace.com began redirecting to SuperPages in 2009. Superpages had acquired InfoSpace's directory services in 2007.In 2008, industry analysts believed InfoSpace was gradually dismantling itself.
In February 2009, Jim Voelker retired as CEO and president yet remained on the company's board as chairman. From February 2009 to November 2010, Will Lansing served as President and CEO of InfoSpace. Under Lansing's leadership, InfoSpace started an online auction website called haggle.com. A year later, it shut down the website and sold its assets to BigDeal.com.
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