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SiteAdvisor
There was an acquisition recently that didn't get much attention, but I think it's worth a blog post.
The company is called SiteAdvisor and it was backed by Bessemer and General Catalyst. We looked at the company when it was just getting formed in early 2005 and liked the team and the idea a lot, but didn't get there quickly enough. And so we missed an opportunity to be involved in something pretty interesting.
SiteAdvisor was sold to McAfee in early April. Here's the blog post announcing the deal by Chris Dixon, the founder and CEO of SiteAdvisor.
SiteAdvisor is a reputation system for web pages. They categorize and database web pages and let you know if something bad is going to happen to you if you go to those pages.
The best way to get started with SiteAdvisor is to install the Firefox extension or the plug-in for Internet Explorer. There is no Safari support yet although the website says they intend to support additional browsers.
Once you do the install (which is very quick), you will start seeing green checks and red x's on search results. To show this, I did a Google search on "free ipod" and here is the result page.
You'll notice that if you mouse over one of the red x's (as I did in this screen shot), you get a description of what's bad on that web page. You get the same thing on green checks, but it explains why they think its a "clean page".
One thing that is interesting is the number of red checks on the sponsored results for "free ipod". Of the three sponsored listings at the top of the organic results, two have red checks. Of the eight sponsored listings on the right, four are checked red and two are as yet untested. Clearly there is a high cost for a free ipod on the Internet!
If you are sick of clicking on links and getting bad stuff, try SiteAdvisor. It's a really good service and clearly was also a great investment.
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» SiteAdvisor Proves that Google Isnt Evil from Mashable*
SiteAdvisor is a rare thing: a new service thats actually kinda useful. The product, which launched in December 2005, was acquired by McAfee in April (for some reason the acquisition didnt get much coverage). So what does it do? Wel... [Read More]
Tracked on May 8, 2006 2:15:50 PM
Posted May 8, 2006 in Venture Capital and TechnologyComments
Cool functionality. How do they make money?
Selling plug ins can be a really tough road.
Posted by: Erik | May 8, 2006 9:58:56 AM
While I think this cool functionality for dubious retail categories, I don't think it matters much for more establish retail categories. For example, I searched on a variety of electronic items (HD TV, satellite radio) and everything is always green.
I guess that's re-assuring, but the value from a system like this is only when it scares me off from a bad retailer. It just hasn't happened on anything but the "scammy" examples that siteadvisor offers.
I think the best part is that for my industry of "custom t-shirts" I'm able to learn about my competitors emailing habits and outbound linking. But all of us are in the "green" so the tool provides consumers little value as far as differentiating retailers.
Posted by: Sean | May 8, 2006 11:15:50 AM
Definitely worth a blog post... it was surprising to me, too, that this acquisition didn't get more attention last month.
Seems significant because, as far as I know, SiteAdvisor is the first successful company built on Greasemonkey-like technology. Greasemonkey got some buzz a year ago about potentially being very disruptive -- see Nivi's take at http://www.nivi.com/blog/article/greasemonkey-and-business-models/ -- but it hasn't amounted to much yet.
Seems like there might be a new business model in there. First, build an innovative "feature" for a well-established site, by way of a browser plugin. Then, if your plugin a) gains traction and b) is hard to reproduce, you're in a prime spot for acquisition by the "host" company, because they'd likely want to incorporate your must-have feature into their standard offering.
You know, with the addition of only a couple lines of code, I bet SiteAdvisor could give you an option to completely hide the potentially-malicious search results. Presumably, no one ever clicks on Big-Red-X links anyways, so it'd be a welcome feature from the users' perspective. But I wonder how Google would feel about a 3rd party removing all those sponsored results. Perhaps a more important question is, what could Google even DO about it?
Posted by: Altay | May 9, 2006 2:04:06 AM
That's a really cool plug-in. I'd go ahead and install it immediately if I didn't think that McAfee was basically malware.
I may get over my aversion and install it anyway.
Posted by: Jason | May 9, 2006 3:23:02 PM
Was very good, but has ha bug that stops Firefox from functioning.
Removed SA from extensions list, and FF is ok again.
Reported the bug to SA, has'nt heard anything from them in a month.
Really sad.
thumps DOWN! on this software ( FF version)
Posted by: Sims | Jul 26, 2006 3:56:10 AM
"Was very good, but has ha bug that stops Firefox from functioning.
Removed SA from extensions list, and FF is ok again.
Reported the bug to SA, has'nt heard anything from them in a month.
Really sad.
thumps DOWN! on this software ( FF version)"
WELL WTF! do you expect from software in BETA/early stage delopment? Thats the most stupid comment have even heard.
We have it installed in on all clients and servers in the company I work in, including my own workstation and it works fine - without a glitch.
Posted by: xx | Jan 12, 2007 3:09:27 PM
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