apparently back in 2000? 2001? phoenix sold* a bunch of motherboard manufacturers a bios called PhoenixNET and here's how it worked: it gave you a nice enhanced splash screen up there. wow! so pretty! then, after you finished installing windows 98/ME, it went in and changed your home and search pages in IE to ads.
it did not last long. ("my wets" voice) please, i am begging you: find me one of these motherboards. i don't even have model numbers but if you've ever seen one I Need That Piece Of Shit
* i haven't looked into this yet but my guess is they didn't charge the mfgrs much, if anything. because as we all know: You Are The Actual Product
looking at phoenix's archived site
Users are offered a free choice of leading PC and Internet utilities and services, which they can select and get running with just a simple mouse click.
Once selected, PhoenixNet automatically delivers these products to the PC. Later on, as new products or updates become available, PhoenixNet automatically notifies users, giving them the option to add or update the PhoenixNet services. PhoenixNet continues to offer new, useful products and services over the lifetime of the PC, thanks to our partnerships with the leading providers of the latest PC and Internet technologies worldwide.
on the one hand that sounds spicier than what i've been told ("just sets your homepage") but also, in the marketing lingo of the era, it's entirely possible what they mean is "we set the users homepage, then hope they get confused and click on the huge graphic, downloading a program that constantly installs new malware."
Or, even simpler, it just means "it sets your homepage, and then we hope the user will never change it and just keep clicking on ads."
https://www.theregister.com/2001/07/19/phoenix_answers_all_our_phonehome/
According to their official statements to The Register, it was not just setting your homepage, but actually injecting a program, the Internet Launch System, that ran on first boot. I don't know what the program would do after that (I will endeavor to find a copy) but it sure sounds like it literally downloaded and installed crapware, and of course (what else?) reported a bunch of analytics back to Phoenix that they could then sell to motherboard vendors.
I can't find a picture of the ILS, and of course the services will be long gone, but I'm still going to try to get a board and find out what I can.
