Another Startup Bites the Dust; Zango Closes Shop; Investors Lose Tens of Millions of Dollars
Zango just went kaput, 10 years after launching to provide users with free downloads of games, music and other content in exchange for the ability to serve them ads when they surfed the Web. In an emotional blog post, Ken Smith, who cofounded Bellevue, Wash.-based Zango with his brother and two of their friends, characterized the shut-down as a “fire sale" of its assets to the search startup Blinkx. Perhaps the flameout is a fitting end, considering the company's somewhat checkered history. Critics long argued that the startup’s software was both hard to remove and sneaky, tricking users into installing it when they downloaded other free software. In fact, the company, originally called 180Solutions (in 2006, it merged with fellow spyware startup Hotbar, another spyware startup) wound up settling at least two lawsuits, one brought by
