” ‘It’s an event that people will remember,’ said Jason Catlett,
a leading privacy advocate and president of Junkbusters. ‘There
will be conversations in boardrooms yet unknown saying, ‘We don’t
want to have done to us what happened to DoubleClick.’ “
“Discoveries of invasive information practices have caused
companies from Microsoft to RealNetworks to modify information
practices in the past. But the DoubleClick story boasted a dramatic
difference: the company’s stock was negatively impacted.”
“…as the privacy criticism heated up and pressure increased
from the government, consumer advocates, and competitors,
company stock plummeted. It sunk to a low of 75 this week,
down 45 points from earlier in the month. The stock experienced
a 20-point loss over a three-day sequence beginning last
Monday.”
“Then, after the company changed course on Thursday, DoubleClick
closed out the week at 97 1/8, up over 13 points from Thursday’s
close. Pretty dramatic bottom-line movement, marking the first
time privacy-related problems dramatically affected a company’s
value on Wall Street.”