Downloader: GGF, Pirate Bay's flaky buyer, also tried to buy Mininova

Friday, April 2, 2010

GGF, Pirate Bay's flaky buyer, also tried to buy Mininova

The Pirate Bay, one of the web's most well-known torrent trackers, may have been sailing into choppier waters than anyone realized when its owners agreed to sell to games company GGF and its eccentric CEO, Hans Pandeya. The deal eventually collapsed, but it turns out that The Pirate Bay wasn't the only major torrent site GGF wanted to buy.

Today, TorrentFreak is reporting that knowledgeable sources, including Pandeya himself, have revealed that GGF planned to purchase not just The Pirate Bay, but also Mininova.

Last year, when GGF made its original $7.8m bid for The Pirate Bay, Mininova was still the biggest torrent indexer on the web. Apparently, Pandeya and Mininova made a deal for 20 million Euros, but the was before Mininova lost a major court case and "went legal," greatly reducing its traffic and its value.

Considering Pandeya has a history of overstating his ability to pay up on these deals -- his investors for the Pirate Bay buyout never came through -- it's not clear that he could have acquired Mininova anyway. No word on whether Pandeya will press on with his scheme of trying to take major torrents sites legit and magically turn a profit, especially after Mininova's newly-legal status destroyed half its traffic. He claims to be working on "a lot of secret plans," though.