Has something happened?
Sept. 28 - Comments are no closed. Too much teasing, not enough action. The end.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Anyone know why I'm getting quite a few hits re Geosign and American Capital?
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8 comments:
I know that for me and several others the story of Geosign and ACASS will never be over as long as a group of very undeserving people stand to profit by it. I don't believe what I've been promised by the company, so maybe anyone interested in buying shouldn't be gypped over like AC was and a couple of us will come forward about what's really going on.
I'm afraid I have no sympathy for American Capital. Just the opposite in fact. If they were indeed suckered by Geosign their shareholders deserve to know the level of the implicated AC execs' incompetence.
If there was fraud involved, then there should be criminal charges. If AC was just criminally dumb, that's a whole other ball of wax.
This Geosign story is not going to come out until someone who knows what actually went down decides to tell it.
My blog's been around long enough now that it's clear I'm not going to burn my sources.
You or anyone else can contact me in complete confidentiality at ann.brocklehurst@gmail.com
There would be lots of people interested in American Capital's bog booboo, if indeed that's what is. For example, how come those responsible for the deal still have their jobs?
To your last question, the blame was heaped on the shoulders of an exec who is no longer with the company. I have a feeling this is the same person as the one that spoke to you (saying he was selective about what information he shared with AC, rather than outright lying).
A big piece of this puzzle is that Google SAID they weren't going to pull the plug for another 5 or so months before they did.
And you're right about feeling no sympathy for AC, as they're basically trying to do now what was done to them - sell a house of cards.
Very interesting that American Capital is now trying to sell the company. Is anyone on the record about that?
As for Google saying they wouldn't be clamping down for another five to six months, I doubt it. What Geosign was doing violated Google's own terms of service. Why would Google give any kind of commitment to Geosign? It had no reason in the word to care about the welfare of a two-bit company from Guelph.
I appreciate all this information but it's still not useable until I have either documents or whistleblowers.
But that's kind of it - it didn't turn out to be a commitment from Google, as they never stuck to it. The amount of advertising revenue we were sending them was ~100 million per year; that's why they talked to us.
I doubt I'll blow the whistle, but a couple of other people are talking about it. Any allegations would get the most press if they were in the middle of a sale.
Yes, of course, you're right, Geosign was paying Google lots of money.
But still, no one at Google could have told anyone at Geosign -- in anything other than a non-offical capacity -- that Google would go on failing to enforce its terms of service.
And anyway,what would be the point -- to fool American Capital a little longer?
Doesn't someone have copies of the documents that you can out in a brown envelope and send to me via snail mail like they used to do back in the good old days?
Back when I first reported on this story, a very nice deep throat sent me an anonymous email.
That Deep Throat is still anonymous.
It's still a good story as long as there's evidence to back it up.
And, on a personal note, I'd really like to say "I told you so" to all the people who told me American Capital had to know it was buying into an arbitrage play.
"But still, no one at Google could have told anyone at Geosign -- in anything other than a non-offical capacity -- that Google would go on failing to enforce its terms of service."
Nope, the other way around - the message was very much that Google was absolutely going to enforce its policies, and we'd better get our pages looking like real pages if we wanted to survive. But we were given a timeframe and that timeframe was advanced several months.
But I digress, the particulars can wait a little longer. It is a good story, it does have legs, it will come out.
Not sure this can wait. There's plenty else going on in the world.
Time to fish or cut bait.
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