Genieo Innovation

Genieo Innovation was established in April 2008 by co-founders Sol Tzvi and Jacob Tenenboem and is headquartered in Herzliya, Israel. Tzvi, who served as CEO, brought a background in R&D and strategic marketing from prominent tech companies, including several managerial roles at Microsoft. The company initially set out to develop a personalization platform that resided on the user's computer, aiming to offer personalized content without compromising user privacy.

The firm's core product was a desktop application that created a personalized, newspaper-style start page for users. This service employed what the company termed Micro-Behavioral-Targeting (MBT), a technology designed to analyze a user's browsing activity to understand their interests. Based on this analysis, the engine would automatically curate and display relevant content, such as news articles and social media feeds, creating a dynamic homepage that adapted to the user's evolving preferences. The stated goal was to help users discover pertinent information without manual input or management.

While the product was initially presented as a useful recommendation engine, it later became classified as a potentially unwanted program (PUP), adware, and privacy-invasive software. The software was often bundled with other applications and could install itself without clear user consent, a method that facilitated its distribution. This business model involved hijacking user browsers, redirecting searches, and tracking user activity to generate revenue through advertising and information mining. Reports from as early as 2013 highlighted that the software was difficult to remove, leaving behind active components even after using the provided uninstaller.

The company secured $3 million in a Seed funding round in December 2009 from Proseed Venture Capital Fund. A significant milestone in the company's history was its acquisition in August 2014 by Somoto, another Israeli company known for bundling software, for approximately $34 million. Following the acquisition, Genieo's software continued to be identified under various names and was eventually added to Apple's XProtect anti-malware service. Keywords: Genieo Innovation, Sol Tzvi, Jacob Tenenboem, start-page personalization, recommendation engine, browser hijacker, adware, potentially unwanted program, PUP, malware, user tracking, Download Valley, Somoto, InstallMac, browser add-on, behavioral targeting, personalized news, information mining, data privacy, desktop application, cybersecurity threat, Micro-Behavioral-Targeting