Microsoft Development Center Norway (known as FAST (Fast Search & Transfer ASA) before 2010[1]) is a Norwegian company, founded in 1997 and based in Oslo, with offices located in Germany, Italy, Sri Lanka, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, Mexico and other countries around the world.
iAd sought to identify opportunities and develop the next-generation search engines that could extract user-friendly information from vast and complex amounts of data.
The European Commission (EC) funded the research project “The Platform for Search of Audiovisual Resources Across Online Spaces” (PHAROS).
During 1998 and 1999, FAST announced strategic alliances with Lycos, Dell and TIBCO, and the first commercial launch of products took place in 1999.
The company's IPO took place in June 2001, and FAST is publicly traded on the main board of the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE) under the ticker symbol 'FAST'.
The company continued over the next couple of years to announce new contracts with customers and partners such as eBay, IBM, BEA, Microsoft, Telus, Elsevier, and Broadvision.
[5][6] That, along with problems with lack of customer payment, was raised by Goldman Sachs in a report, written in June 2007 by Moawalla.
On August 8 the company reported actual Q2 2007 numbers with revenue of US$34.1M (license sales down 41% sequentially and 24% y on y) and operating loss of US$38M.
[7] As a result of this, the company has announced that it will implement a layoff program of 20% of all staff,[8] reducing the quarterly operational cost base in excess of US$12M,[9] as it tries to return to profitability.
[citation needed] FAST received a further blow when a major customer, Schibsted, said it had made a too-risky decision in choosing to implement its own web search engine and was changing its strategy.
Investors and customers were hoping that, to reverse the slide, the company would announce new accounting and quality controls in its Q3 report.
The ongoing turmoil saw three directors resign from the board, the last being Johan Fredrik Odfjell, who was quoted in the company's release as saying: "FAST faces many challenges and opportunities going forward".
On 22 December, Orkla, FAST's largest shareholder, demanded an extraordinary general meeting to force Fussel and Keith off the board.
Microsoft had secured the backing of FAST's two largest institutional shareholders, Orkla and Hermes Focus Asset Management Europe.
[13] As of 24 April 2008, 97.37% of all FAST shares were controlled by MACS Holdings Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corp.
[15] As more information came to light about the major readjustment of the accounts, it was reported that Microsoft might not have completed its due diligence adequately.
The complementary products were application suites used by businesses to publish and index reference material onto discs, network workstations, and online.
[17] On 24 May 2008, Norwegian news website E24.no reported that the Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway had asked police to investigate anomalies it had uncovered in the FAST accounts.