PointCast (dotcom)
PointCast was a company formed in 1992 in Sunnyvale, California, at the start of the Dot-com era. The company used push technology to deliver news and information across the Internet, which was burdening to corporate networks with excessive bandwidth use. The company's main product was the PointCast Network, which required the PointCast desktop client (which was eventually bundled with Microsoft Windows). At its height, News Corp offered $450 million in 1997 for the company, but PointCast was purchased in 1999 by San Diego-based Launchpad Technologies (an Idealab funded company) for only $7 million after the company ran into financial and revenue troubles. It is a classic example of a Dot-com failure.
Launchpad's eWallet product was combined with the existing PointCast technology to create Entrypoint, which offered a free desktop toolbar and offer customized news, stocks and sports feeds. The new client abandoned push, making it much more friendly to corporate networks.
Entrypoint merged with Internet Financial Network in 2000 forming Infogate, continuing the same free service until switching to a fee-based co-branded model, partnering with news outlets such as USA Today and CNN. In 2003, the company was acquired by America Online, and all services were halted.
PointCast and the browser wars
PointCast played a part in the Browser Wars. After its initial success, Microsoft and Netscape decided to integrate push technology into Internet Explorer with CDF and into Netscape Navigator with RDF. Both companies used the concept of "channels" which pushed the content. Microsoft went even further by incorporating the Active Desktop which pushed content to the desktop...
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