Hardly surprising. Anyone who would work at a place like that has clearly demonstrated where their moral compass points - straight at their wallet.

One down. Many, many more to go.

They should have been shot with balls of their own ordure!

Efros

In buying a company whose technology you don't want ?

Would be like me buying Microsoft ;o)

"......marks the death knell of a controversial business model."

Ok then, answer this. Why the hell would Blinkx buy it if they weren't going to use it? Sheer altruism for malware-oppressed end-users doesn't seem like a viable reason, especially in the current economic climate.....

"Zango began life as 180 Solutions"

First rule of business - have nothing to do with any firm whose name includes the word 'solutions'

Phorm next - please?

I am thinking botnet or some other not so honest operation. If not adware, then where is the value in this company?

@James Pickett --- You too?

We learnt the hard way and had a positive discrimination against such company names.

Although the UK affiliate networks have largely cleaned themselves of adware affiliates, it's unfortunately still quite common practice, particularly in the European markets where comparable operations had none of the controversy of the silent 'drive-by' installations 180 solutions/Zango and their ilk in the US were culpable of (even if you believed they didn't knew what their affiliates were doing). In addition there are still a lot of 'search engines' and traffic purchase operations that will sell you traffic that is actually sourced from adware-infected computers.

Still, advertisers aren't stupid, none of the big brands want to taint their reputation by association with such underhand practices and the evidence they were influencing a purchase is hard to come by with the adware engines, so eventually these operations will be pushed right to the fringe where only the desperate are prepared to tread.

I believe that this incident involving the closure of Zango, the spawn of Satan on the Internet, can be used by theists as indisputable evidence of the existence of God.

Which one?

More like proof of a Terry Pratchett style Death of Internet Scumbags, which may possibly look like a wallet with a scythe (riding astride a Baleful Numbered Bank Account ;o)

I so DO hope so...