Cmgi history

CMGI, Inc., was founded in 1968 as College Marketing Group by Glenn a nd Gail Mathews who aimed to sell lists of college courses and names of college faculty to textbook publishers.

They are not a General Motors but a Tucker'' -- a reference to the failed upstart auto company memorialized in Francis Ford Coppola's 1988 film.

In 1989, CMG purchased a printing and direct mail company, which it renamed SalesLink.

In trying to sell books online in 1993, it developed what became one of the first Web browsers, Booklink, which it sold a year later to America Online for stock it later sold for $70 million.

In 1994, CMG Information Services was a tiny company that sold mailing lists of college professors to textbook publishers.

Engage, for example, was started in 1995 as a network of sites that would keep track of the topics that interested users, though not of who they were.

The company formed a second venture fund, @Ventures II, with &#3 6;60 million in 1996 and expanded its Internet reach by investing in ThingWorld.com, Silknet Software, Premiere Technology, Vicinity, and GeoCities.

In 1998 the company formed @Ventures III, a $282 million cap ital venture fund geared toward expanding investments in Internet and technology companies.

On March 18, 1999, moreover, the company joined the Nasdaq 100.

In early 2000, the company continued to expand its holdings with new mergers and acquisitions.

CMGI's restructuring continued into 2001, and the firm announced that its @Ventures business was going to pare back new investments.

The company continued to restructure its operations in 2003, exiting the technology professional services business.

2004: Joseph C. Lawyer becomes CMGI's new president and CEO.

In a further sign of recovery and renewed expansion, the company's su bsidiary, ModusLink, expanded its Utah operations in August 2005 by o pening a new facility in West Valley.