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Private company

Claria Corporation

American software company

Claria Corporation (formerly Gator Corporation) was a software company based in Redwood City, California that invented “Behavioral Marketing”, a new form of online advertising. It was founded in 1998 by Denis Coleman (co-founder of Symantec), Stanford MBA Sasha Zorovic (Saša Zorović), and engineer Mark Pennell, based on work Zorovic had done at Stanford. In March 1999 Jeff McFadden was hired as CEO and Zorovic was effectively forced out.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

1998Founded1
  • HeadquartersRedwood City1
  • Legal formcompany1

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Claria Corporation (formerly Gator Corporation) was a software company based in Redwood City, California that invented “Behavioral Marketing”, a new form of online advertising. It was founded in 1998 by Denis Coleman (co-founder of Symantec), Stanford MBA Sasha Zorovic (Saša Zorović), and engineer Mark Pennell, based on work Zorovic had done at Stanford. In March 1999 Jeff McFadden was hired as CEO and Zorovic was effectively forced out.2

Products and brands

Gator

Originally released in 1999, Gator was most frequently installed together with programs being offered free of charge, such as Go!Zilla, or Kazaa. The development of these programs was partially funded by revenue from advertising displayed by Gator. By mid-2003 Gator was installed on an estimated 35 million PCs.

Even though Gator was installed with an uninstall available via Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel on Microsoft Windows, many spyware removal tools can also detect and remove it. Gator's end user license agreement attempted to disallow its manual removal by prohibiting "unauthorized means" of uninstallation.

The Gator software undercut the fundamental ad-supported nature of many Internet publishers by replacing banner ads on web sites with its own, thereby depriving the content provider of the revenue necessary to continue providing that content. In June 2002 a number of large publishers, including the New York Post, The New York Times and Dow Jones & Company, sued Gator Software for its practice of replacing ads.

Most of the lawsuits were settled out of court in February 2003.

Read the full text

Gator attempted to combat spyware labels with litigation. In September 2003 the company threatened sites such as PC Pitstop with libel lawsuits.

As part of a settlement signed Sept. 30, (2003), PC Pitstop--which scans computers for hostile and otherwise undesirable code--removed pages from its Spyware Information Center with such titles as "Is Gator Spyware?" and the "Gator Boycott List."

In February 2004, Gator made a confidential settlement of litigation brought against it by seven top newspaper publishers, including The Washington Post, the New York Post, The New York Times, and Dow Jones. The Washington Post, L.L. Bean and Extended Stay America suits were similarly settled.

Other defunct applications

Gator corporation released a suite of "free" Internet applications that performed various tasks. However, after installing the applications, a user would continually be shown ads from the Gain network, even when the programs were not running in the foreground. This suite included:

Gator - Gator itself was initially marketed as a password keeper.

eWallet - a program that will automatically fill in personal information on webpages from a stored set of data entered by the user.

GotSmiley

Dashbar - an advertisement supported search toolbar by Claria. Intrusive in that it displays pop up ads during an Internet browsing session.

Date Manager

Precision Time

Screenscenes

Weatherscope

WebSecureAlert

While using the software, a user was shown advertisements. According to Computer Associates' spyware information center, all applications in the suite are classified as both adware and spyware, as they both display ads unrelated to the product while the primary user interface is not visible. These programs all employ the user's Internet connection to report behavior information back to Claria. Although the user's explicit consent is always required to install these applications, Claria took advantage of the fact that most users choose not bothering to educate themselves about what they are installing. In most cases, during the install process, users must choose whether to install the "free" version (which serves lots of ads as described above) or to pay the $30 for a version that serves no ads. Since the announcement to shut the ad network down, Claria has stopped accepting payment for "ad free" versions.

From Wikipedia’s article on Claria Corporation, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Timeline

  1. 1998Founded Founded1

Sources

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