• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 1, 2005

Online advertising company Claria will no longer bundle its ad-serving software with file-sharing service Kazaa. Two weeks ago, Claria gave 60 days' termination notice to Sharman Networks, which owns Kazaa, said Claria's Chief Marketing Officer Scott Eagle.

Eagle said the company's decision was unrelated to Monday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Grokster case--which held that file-sharing networks could be liable for encouraging copyright violations by users. Instead, said Eagle, Claria ended its relationship with Kazaa as "part of our evolution and migration to work with more mainstream publishers."

When Claria filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission last year, in advance of an aborted initial public offering, Kazaa was listed as one of the company's significant distributors. It's unclear how many of Claria's current 40 million users came to Claria via Kazaa.

Separately, Claria and Microsoft both declined to comment on a report in Thursday's New York Times stating that Microsoft was in talks to purchase Claria.

But earlier this year, when Claria announced its new behavioral targeting program, the company said it wanted to grow its subscriber base from around 40 million to more than 150 million; one possibility mentioned at the time was that Claria would form relationships with application makers, such as Instant Messaging or media player services.

Claria--formerly Gator Corp.--has long been known as an adware company that serves pop-up ads to users who have downloaded its software. But recently the company branched out into behavioral targeting with a new offering, BehaviorLink. Through the program, Claria serves targeted ads to consumers based on their surfing behavior, as recorded by its software.