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There's a public company in Israel called Babylon whose business model is giving away a popular translator software in exchange for installing spyware. They're

There's a public company in Israel called Babylon whose business model is giving away a popular translator software in exchange for installing spyware. They're huge and are planning an American IPO this year. Some people here are saying that it's all a big stack of cards and investors are going to lose all their money, but the analysts are actually saying that it's a valid business model and the company is underpriced. I'm wondering who is right... How is this business model of spying on your users different from Google's or Facebook's?

jordan0day 14y ago
Active vs. passive, perhaps (although admittedly that distinction has shrunken substantially). That is, "in the good old days", facebook or google really only tracked what you did, on facebook or google, while crapware could track everything you did on the computer. Now, of course, as more and more of our lives are based around our browsers, and google and facebook track more of what you do anywhere on the web, not just on their sites, so I suppose it's not that different.
SyneRyder 14y ago
Would that be the same Babylon translation software that patio11 found advertising on the InstallMonetizer network? See his comment (and screenshot of the installer's default options) here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5060399 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5060399
hncommenter13 14y ago
Perion (Nasdaq:PERI) has the same model, also from Israel. There's a whole crop of Israeli companies that have similar businesses, in fact.