Once upon a time there was this popular online search engine that offered free e-mail accounts that could be accessed anywhere there was a computer with an Internet connection.The company that ran the search engine needed to make more money, so they plastered annoying banner ads all over every page of their website. But, that was not enough.
The company then decided to put annoying banner ads in the window where people read their e-mails. But that was still not good enough.
The company had the option of using pop-up advertising, but they saw how quickly customers fled other services when the other services started using pop-up advertising.
One day the head honchos were sitting in the boardroom. An annoying old PAC-Man video game in the corner was wailing the "game over" death cry. The board members looked at each other and without saying a word they all were wondering the same thing.
'How soon after our company's economic growth goes flat will everyone start selling off their stock?'
They all looked down. The PAC-Man video game started its demo mode sound effects. Suddenly an idea formed in the head of the CEO. "Hey! let's offer extended e-mail protection against SPAM! and charge only $29.95 a year extra!"
"We already have that!" said another board member, "Nobody's buying it!"
"They will if we randomly generate e-mail addresses and SPAM the hell out of our own customers!"
"It's too soon after we made the $29.95 offer! Someone would catch on to us!" said a third board member.
Simultaneously, the rest of the board members said "Naa! Who Cares!" and they all agreed to randomly generate e-mail addresses and SPAM the hell out of their own customers until their customers were forced into paying $29.95 a year for extra SPAM blocking services.
The End