Congratulations to Dale Begg-Smith on winning the first gold medal for Australia in the Winter Olympics this year! Being out of Australia, I had never heard of the guy before, so I was intrigued when I heard that he was an internet millionaire. He's got the whole millionaire playboy image going - driving a black Lamborghini around while he indulges in his passion of skiing. I thought to myself - there's a success story right there - I wonder what type of business he had to actually achieve this.

The first sets of articles I read were decidedly light on what the business was that he ran, it was varyingly described as a "internet marketing" company, designing search engines and pop-up window blockers. This revelation really impressed me - here is a guy fighting the good fight against the spammers. I didn't really understand why they are not shouting out the name of the company from the rooftops, as I know I'd use this opportunity to get a bit of free publicity. After a bit more digging around, I found a reference to the name of the company, AdsCPM Network. Plugging that into Google, I'm surprised not to see the company website as the top hit. For an internet company, you'd think having a website would add a bit of credibility. On the other hand, some companies don't need websites, and make their deals in the real world. I eventually find out that the domain name for AdsCPM is (funnily enough) adscpm.com (don't click on the link, it doesn't work). Since I can't see the website, I just plug the domain name into Google hoping for some results. That's when things start getting very interesting.

A Google result for AdsCPM gives one of it's page titles as "Revolutionizing Pop-Under Advertising". Hmm they make pop-under ads. Not particularly charming, but not overtly offensive. Reading through the results only makes things worse - there's an analysis of a bit of spyware which had infected a Windows 2000 machine, and the domain name adscpm.com keeps popping up. In fact, Adscpm keeps seeming to be associated with an adware network. Now, I'm not sure if this company is the same one that Dale Begg-Smith is associated with (this press release seems to suggest so), but I think if he should be lauded for anything, it's his achievements on the slopes, and not what he did with his business.

I was hoping to scoop this bit of information, but I've been beaten by The Age.