David Politis

Salt Lake City-based ContentWatch announced yesterday afternoon that it has acquired Net Nanny from San Francisco-based LookSmart (NASDAQ: LOOK).

Historically perceived as a market (if not a technology) leader in the Internet filtration/parental controls marketplace, Net Nanny has become something of an orphaned/abandoned product within LookSmart as management has decided to focus the company on the targeted/specialized search engine marketplace.

In fact, a quick review of the LookSmart news release archives shows that the last time the term Net Nanny appeared in a LookSmart news release headline was September 22, 2004 — more than 27 months ago!

Additionally, it appears that LookSmart has not generated any software licensing revenue since fiscal 2003 (ended 12/31) when the company generated $15.3 million in software licensing, or 11 percent of its overall revenue. (See p. 26 of LookSmart’s 2005 annual report.)

So, although the official ContentWatch/LookSmart news release announcing the acquisition does not disclose the price paid by ContentWatch for Net Nanny, I suspect CEO Sunderlage and company got a steal of a price. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that ContentWatch didn’t pay a dime for Net Nanny (but that’s just a wild guess on my part).

Regardless of the price, however, it should be a good addition to the ContentWatch stable of product offerings.

(DISCLOSURE: Politis Communications provided public relations services to ContentWatch on a project basis in 2005.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 at 1:41 am and is filed under Execs, Money News, Hardware, Influencers, Utah Technology, Internet, Investor Relations, Money News, SEC News, Software, Supporters, Utah Technology, Technologists, Utah Specific, Utah Technology, VCs, Utah Technology. 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.