"oops!   I did it again"

In addition to being the title track of a subpar Britney Spears effort (critics agree -- the self-titled "Britney" really is a superior objet d'art) , "oops, I did it again" could be the name of a book documenting the falsehoods spewed by Keith Teare -- as in "oops, I just told another whopping lie!"

Your editors will attempt to identify some of these instances where Keith is, shall we say, experimenting with the truth, and will try to set the record straight.  Check back often for more debunking of Teare-aganda.

This week's Whopper:

"Microsoft . . . didn't ask us to become dependent - although they did insist we discontinue the distribution of our plug-in client in August 1999."

- Keith Teare, commenting in his weblog about Microsoft's alleged tactics to control Keywords.

Sorry folks, but this just isn't true.  Microsoft never "insisted" that RealNames discontinue its lame plug-in client.  This is another example of how Keith distorts reality to serve his twin goals:  blaming Microsoft for his demise, and avoiding responsibility for crappy business decisions.  In reality, Keith unilaterally (and over the protest of many in the company) ordered the plug-in client scrapped.  The plug-in was a buggy piece of crap software anyway, and Keith wanted to put his best foot forward with Microsoft -- he thought that Microsoft would be impressed that RealNames was abandoning the plug-in and placing all of its distribution bets on Microsoft.  Actually, Microsoft didn't give a crap what we did with the plug-in.  I'm not even sure they knew RealNames had a plug-in.  Plus, if Microsoft was so adamant about eliminating alternate distribution, why didn't they "insist" that RealNames sever its relationships with other search engines like AltaVista, Google and InfoSeek?  Wouldn't that have been more threatening?

Which leads me to another Whopper from the same document quoted above:

"During 1998 . . . we made deals with AltaVista, LookSmart and Inktomi to include our results in their search engines. . . .  [O]ur search distribution grew to include more than 50 search engines."

Um, are you kidding me?  FIFTY SEARCH ENGINES?  I'm not even sure anyone can name more than 10 search engines.  I challenge Keith right here, right now, to name even half of these alleged 50 search engines.

Stay tuned for more Whopper debunking...