Tuesday October 12, 4:00 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
Digital River Acquires the PC Download Assets of Walnut
Creek CDROM and Simtel.net
Acquisition Will Enhance Digital River's Position as One of the Largest Download Providers on
the Internet
MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 12, 1999-- Digital River (Nasdaq: DRIV - news), the leader in Web-based
commerce for digital products, today announced the acquisition of certain assets of Walnut Creek CDROM, Inc., including
the Simtel.net archive and Walnut Creek CDROM's Windows® and DOS based download assets. Together the cdrom.com
and Simtel.net sites represent one of the largest downloadable digital product libraries available on the Internet. The sites
are market leaders in free online downloading of software with over 100,000 unique users per day performing downloads
which approach one terabyte of data per day. Downloads from the sites include software, PC game demos, MP3 files and
images.
The current cdrom.com site will be transitioned over the next three months to reflect Digital River's purchase and the new
emphasis of the site on Windows® and DOS downloads. Digital River plans to greatly enhance the content and technology
of both sites, optimizing them for efficient downloads. Walnut Creek will continue under a new site with its physical cdrom
and open source software businesses after this transition is complete.
''We believe that cdrom.com and Simtel.net are extraordinary strategic assets for Digital River,'' said Joel Ronning, Digital
River CEO. ''The acquisition means that Digital River provides more software downloads than anyone on the Internet and
it gives us additional strength in the shareware market. Further, the purchase of these assets offers an opportunity to
tremendously expand the distribution of our new eBot product. We will be enhancing the sites so that users will have the
option of completing their downloads with the help of eBot.''
EBot, Digital River's new subscription service, automatically identifies relevant updates for PC software and helps
consumers download free and discounted software, as well as the latest software upgrades, patches and bug fixes. EBot
(www.ebot.com), was recently named Best Productivity/Internet Product of the Year at the RetailVision Fall '99
conference in Chicago. The Best of RetailVision Award Program, sponsored by TWICE Magazine and GartnerGroup,
honors outstanding innovators in the computer retail industry.
The acquisition price for the download assets of Walnut Creek was $4 million in stock and cash.
About Walnut Creek CDROM
Walnut Creek CDROM, Inc., based in Concord, California, is a publisher of high quality Open Source software products
and shareware CDROMs. Their flagship products are Slackware® Linux and the FreeBSD® Operating System. For more
information please visit Walnut Creek's website at wccdrom.com. |
