Carl Page's "shell" public company, Handheld Entertainment

March 21, 2006 | Matt Marshall

Carl Page was an Internet success before his younger brother, Larry Page, made billions as co-founder of Google.

Our Mercury News colleague Mike Langberg catches up with Carl Page’s latest effort (free registration) at Handheld Entertainment of San Francisco, which makes a portable device called the Zvue for playing audio and video.

But Langberg is somewhat critical, saying Page is using a tactic tainted by a long history of scams: purchasing a dormant or “shell” public company and merging into it, instead of slogging it through the conventional initial public offering process. Read the story and decide for yourself what you think.

Separately, Dan Primack weighs in on the totally different “blank-check” entity, Acquicor created by Steve Wozniak & Co. We mentioned it a few days ago, and now Primack seems to have the same questions. Though he takes the extra step, and raises the “fraud” question.

Next Story: Wilson Sonsini: VCs going to China & India at unprecedented rate
Previous Story: Kleiner's new partner, Ying Lee

Twitter

Facebook

Google Buzz

Digg

StumbleUpon

Delicious

Google

More...

About the Author, Matt Marshall

Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.