Most of you are probably acquainted with the Internet-based real estate web site known as Zillow, which is a public company under the ticker symbol Z. They haven’t been public that long, and although they aren’t doing as badly as some IPOs (Lending Club – symbol LC – leaps to mind), they aren’t exactly setting the world on fire either.
What you may not know is that Realtor.com (or, more specifically, the parent company called Move) is suing Zillow and two former executives for nearly two billion bucks for stealing trade secrets. One interesting aspect of the case is how much active and aggressive deletion there appears to have been just prior to the lawsuit being filed by the two executives; one snippet I saw read…….
Seems kind of intentional, at least from reading the above, doesn’t it? I mean, I’m not that acquainted with the case, but when I read something like that, I draw my own conclusions.
One would assume that with this kind of evidence, the two chaps being accused would be a little short of plausible excuses. But – nope! – there’s one handy, and boy, is it a doozy:
Multiple computers. Smartphones. Thousands of emails. Text messages. Special programs to wipe out data. Wow, that must have been some really amazing porn!
Of course, a man using a computer on the Internet to look at porn is totally weird and freaky. I mean, what kind of sicko does that kind of thing? And if he did, I don’t blame him for wanting to hide it! What a weirdo! Oh, wait a second……….
More than Netflix. More than Amazon. Oh, and there’s this:
Suffice it to say, if you’re trying to duck a nearly $2 billion lawsuit, declaring that you were ashamed to be watching porn on the web (thus compelling you to go absolutely hog-wild deleting every morsel of data under the sun) is pretty damned amusing.
