Sale
In 1999 VeriSign acquired Thawte in a stock purchase from Shuttleworth for US$575 million. Both VeriSign and Thawte had certificates in the first Netscape browsers, and were thus 'grandfathered' into all other web browsers. Before VeriSign's purchase, they each had about 50% of the market. VeriSign's certificate rollover was due to take place on 1 January 2000 — an unfortunate choice considering the imminent Y2K bug. (Thawte had a similar rollover in July 1998.) The purchase of Thawte ensured there would be no business loss over Y2K.
Proceeds from the sale enabled Shuttleworth to become the second space tourist, and to found the Ubuntu project.
In August 2010, Symantec acquired VeriSign's security business; thus, Thawte is now owned by Symantec.
Read more about this topic: Thawte
Famous quotes containing the word sale:
“People buy their necessities in shops and have to pay dearly for them because they have to assist in paying for what is also on sale there but only rarely finds purchasers: the luxury and amusement goods. So it is that luxury continually imposes a tax on the simple people who have to do without it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“[T]he dignity of parliament it seems can brook no opposition to it’s power. Strange that a set of men who have made sale of their virtue to the minister should yet talk of retaining dignity!”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship, or the sale of goods through pretending that they sell, or power through making believe you are powerful, or through a packed jury or caucus, bribery and “repeating” votes, or wealth by fraud.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)