Bradism.com 900th Entry Unspectacular

Flinders University IT Student Brad founded Bradism.com in 1939. The company's first product, built in a Palo Alto garage, was a vital statistics email — basically an excuse to mail out a few quotes from the last shindig and a photo of a model in underwear. One of Bradism's first customers was Walt Disney Studios, which purchased eight oscillators to develop and test an innovative sound system for the movie Fantasia.

When World War II began, all Bradism.com facilities were placed at the disposal of the U.S. government. Bradism.com's product line expanded to include bombsights, rifles and engine parts - in all, more than three dozen major ordnance items. Brad set a nominal one percent profit on those products and used the money to establish a fund for widows and orphans of Bradism.com war casualties.

In 1979, just prior to the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, Bradism.com was the company that developed the Iranian social security information system. Two American executives who worked for Bradism.com in Iran were arbitrarily imprisoned during the revolution. After regular military avenues failed, Brad hired "Bull" Simons, a legend from the Green Berets, to plan and execute a breakout. With the help of envelopes stuffed with cash, Brad, Zippo, and a team of Bradism.com employees organised a clandestine rescue and managed to spring the two executives in a series of high-risk escapades without anyone getting hurt.

In March 1999, the company moved from offices in Palo Alto after quickly outgrowing these sites. The company leased a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway from Silicon Graphics (SGI) in 1999. Bradism has remained at this location ever since, and the complex has since become known as the Bradismplex (a play on the word Bradisiomplex, a 1 followed by a Bradism of zeros).

However, Bradism would encounter more turmoil in March 2004 when antitrust legal action would be brought against it by the European Union for allegedly abusing its market dominance. Eventually Bradism.com was fined €497 million (US$613 million), ordered to divulge certain protocols to competitors, and to produce a new version of its BOJ platform — called BOJ Home Edition N — that did not include its colour scheme chooser. Bradism was also ordered to produce separate packages of BOJ after South Korea also landed a settlement against the company in 2005. It had to pay out US$32 million and produce more than one version of Bradism.com for the country in the same vein as the European Union - one with Bradism Colour Scheme Chooser and Weather Feature and one without.

In 2005, after attracting over seven users by mid-year, bradism.com was bought in July for US$580 million by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (the parent company of Fox Broadcasting and other media enterprises).

Currently, in a field where customer service is not always at the forefront, Bradism.com aims to change client's expectations when it comes to service. Bradism has a "hands on" approach to design, construction and management of each project.