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Technology Stocks : InfoSpace (INSP): Where GNET went! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: silversoldier a/k/a SI Sy who wrote (22870)	12/19/2000 11:46:59 AM
From: The O	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28311

This is pretty funny- its a press release from the Lawyer that took the case. Hagens Berman Announces Lawsuit Charges That InfoSpace Chairman Naveen Jain Denied Stock Options to Key EmployeeLawsuit Alleges Documented Pattern of Illegal Behavior SEATTLE, Dec 19, 2000 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- In a suit filed yesterday in U.S. District Court, an InfoSpace employee alleges InfoSpace (Nasdaq: INSP chart, msgs) chairman Naveen Jain illegally denied him promised stock options. According to the suit, filed against both Jain and InfoSpace, Jain used plaintiff John Richards to develop integral aspects of InfoSpace and then failed to keep his promise of lucrative stock options. The lawsuit charges Jain, in the process of building InfoSpace into a leading Internet company, frequently hired key executives by promising a specified award of options or stock. According to the suit, Jain obtained what he needed from these executives and then refused to reward them with the options he had promised. The lawsuit charges Jain with violating the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) by engaging in a pattern of fraudulent conduct. According to Richards' attorney, Steve Berman, the pattern includes at least seven other executives who have alleged that Jain made promises of compensation and then reneged on those promises. According to the suit, InfoSpace's outside counsel, after its own investigation, found that a "pattern" had emerged of Jain denying he had made such promises to employees when he in fact appeared to have done so. After outside counsel's finding, the InfoSpace board of Directors concluded on December 11 1998, that InfoSpace's granting practices were "careless" and that Jain had not exercised "appropriate discretion or judgment" in the process of hiring employees. The complaint notes that three of these cases were settled, and InfoSpace admitted in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that "its procedures with respect to the manner of granting options to new employees were not clearly documented," and that there could be no assurance that claims "would not be filed in the future by employees claiming they have been denied compensation." According to Berman, the lawsuit states Jain has a pattern of using his employees and those around him. "Naveen Jain is one of the world's richest men, yet the complaint alleges that some of his key people, who relied on his promises, came up empty handed," Berman said. "The suit states that John Richards worked diligently to make InfoSpace successful, but has not received the promised options to share in that success," he added. The lawsuit alleges that Jain was able to hire Richards by repeatedly promising that Richards would receive the highest stock award options of any InfoSpace employee, even if the employee was hired at a later time. However, several employees have received stock options larger than Richards, proving Jain has not complied with his agreements and representations, according to the complaint. The complaint alleges that even at the time Jain made these promises he had granted other employees more options. The suit further charges that Jain attempted to cover up his trail of broken promises by instructing employees not to discuss the amount of options they had been promised with each other and by instructing them not to put his promises in writing. Before joining InfoSpace, Richards successfully launched Yellow Pages on the Internet, the first-ever print yellow pages product to place its data and advertisers online. The lawsuit also states Jain hired Richards on January 8, 1998 to make yellow pages advertising a cornerstone of InfoSpace's business platform. According to the suit filed by Berman, InfoSpace's success is based on a pattern of illegal fraudulent conduct by Jain. "Our theory is that he identified executives that could assist him in building up InfoSpace and then wooed them with lucrative stock options," Berman said. "We intend to prove that later, when these employees were no longer of immediate use to him, those options were denied," Berman added. The complaint also relies on factual allegations made by five other executives in lawsuits against Jain in which they made charges similar to those of Richards. The complaint describes InfoSpace as a provider of Internet applications and information services, powering private-labeled information and applications services across the Internet to wireless devices and Web sites. InfoSpace recently acquired Go2Net.com, a Seattle company that delivered similar services to the broadband marketplace. The lawsuit seeks damages as well as enforcement of the agreement to provide Richards the largest number of stock options of any staff, as well as attorneys' fees. Steve Berman is managing partner of Hagens Berman in Seattle. Recently cited as one of the nation's top 100 attorneys by The National Law Journal, Berman is a nationally recognized expert in class action litigation. Berman represented Washington State, 12 other states and Puerto Rico in lawsuits against the tobacco industry that resulted in the largest settlement in the history of litigation. Berman also served as counsel in several other high-profile cases including the Washington Public Power Supply litigation, which resulted in a settlement exceeding $850 million. Other cases include litigation involving the Exxon Valdez oil spill; Louisiana Pacific Siding; The Boeing Company; Morrison Knudsen; Piper Jaffray; Nordstrom; Boston Chicken; and Noah's Bagels. EDITORS NOTE: Accredited media may request copies of the complaint and background material by contacting Mark Firmani at 206/443-9537 or mark@firmani.com. Contact: Hagens Berman

To: silversoldier a/k/a SI Sy who wrote (22870)	12/19/2000 7:11:33 PM
From: levy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28311

the portal's portal , Traffick, some time ago said it thought metacrawler was much better than dogpile....here is what they had to say Metacrawler Does Go2Net Proud TEST DRIVE by Andrew Goodman - February 18, 2000 In the previous column, I considered some features or issues that might be important in evaluating the quality of a meta-search tool. It's impossible to review them all, but based on the criteria mentioned last time, here is a quick take on a couple of metasearch engines which are hot, cool, or otherwise. Still Hot: Metacrawler Go2Net's flagship metasearch engine, Metacrawler, remains very popular, and does a lot of little things right. The customization is nice, the speed is good, and you can set longer timeouts if you want to make sure you check slower-responding engines. Other little touches include: * Country-specific search option: you can check as many of 27 countries as you would like to search, and results will only be returned from those country-specific domains * Related searches are suggested; * any, all, or phrase search options clearly displayed; * some additional bells and whistles like MP3 and auction searches * power searching allows you to specify the time you're willing to wait for the search, and gives you the option to display results by relevance (consolidated) or by search engine (in serial order) The best feature of all, in my view, is the customization. Many of us have a certain way we'd like to use a search engine time and again. Wouldn't it be nice if the thing used cookies to remember which search engines you like to search, whether you prefer to default to "any" or "all keywords, what country domains you search, and various other default settings? Metacrawler does this. We can hope for much more extensive use of these techniques from our search engines in the future. Being able to customize your preferences is what it's all about. Another great feature is the ability to click on the search results from just one of the engines, if you're interested in one set of results in particular. Every rose has its thorn. We're prompted to check out the "new Metacrawler directory." You guessed it, dmoz strikes again. The development team at Metacrawler has thought of pretty much everything. It's still a great meta-search tool. Overall: 3 stars. Dogpile Dogpile is popular with children and AOL users (I'm kidding!). To me, there's nothing you can do on Dogpile that you can't do better with Go2Net's main metasearch tool, Metacrawler. It does work quickly and efficiently, and looks OK. Dogpile's results reporting format may be favored by some users, but the majority of us don't prefer a "serial" reporting format, preferring the consolidated results offered by most others. It should be reiterated that Metacrawler can actually be set to return results in consolidated or serial format. So Dogpile must have been acquired for its large user base, in something of a defensive maneuver by Go2Net. Later on, they can let users in on the fact that Metacrawler is far superior. Since this is a family web site, rather than calling Dogpile cool, hot, or otherwise, I'll leave the thermometer and Humidex readings to your imagination. Overall: 1.5 stars traffick.com so if this is the case why are they putting dogpile as the search engine on infospace homepage, 100 hot homepage and hypermart instead of metacrawler??????.......well probably because of the 7.5 royalty fee on gross revenues they have to pay for metacrawler but not dogpile since they own dogpile outright and only licence metacrawler from netbot....set section 3.4 techdeals.biz.findlaw.com