Shelby Bonnie, the CEO of CNET relates from back in the days when they were starting their business venture. It was about the time Microsoft announced ActiveX. The guys at CNET, who own some valuable domain names (news.com, download.com, kids.com) checked the domain ActiveX.com which surprisingly was not taken by Microsoft at the time of the press release.

After they took the domain name CNET talked with Microsoft about developing a website for the new ActiveX technology; Microsoft responded very positive and they promised to send software engineers in to help with it.

Since CNET wanted to keep itself as a neutral source of news and technology, therefore it decided to develop the website of a competitor. And thus, after a long struggle they managed to buy Java.com from a coffee maker. As soon as CNET acquired the domain name, they started receiving repeated threats from Sun Microsystems that if they develop a website, they’ll get sued without further ado.

There you have it, the real-life comparison of a company with a positive attitude versus a company with a bad attitude.

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Software, Venture Capital article posted on Sunday, June 11th, 2006 at 10:46 am . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.