Ortra Inc. (Makko Oko)

Ortra Inc.

Type	Public Company
Industry	Internet Online services
Founded	July 10, 1995 (1995-07-10)
Founder	Dimitry Asalov
Area served	Makko Oko
Website	ortrainc.mk

Ortra Inc., known as Ortra simply, is a publicly-owned, state-authorized, technology company in the Empire of Makko Oko focusing on providing digital services that benefit the public. Ortra provides many services including Ortra Search, Ortra Money and Ortra Box. Ortra Inc. was founded by Dimitry Asalov on July 10th, 1995 after years of being an internal military-only database search system which would become Ortra Search. Ortra is the default search engine selected for use with the Ortra Browser and is built into the government-built Sun OS. It is also the provider of the world's only search engine in Makuri.

Etymology

The name "Ortra" is Makuri for "In Space", which is a reference to everything in space is now within reach.

History

Before 1995: Military Database Search System

Ortra was originally named the Internal Defense Network, or IDN. It was established in early 1991 with the scaling deployment and growth of the military forces as a way to quickly track the whereabouts of people and update information instantly. At the time, the Department of Defense used foreign-built computers as the internet was not around in Makko Oko yet and would not be for several years. The IDN started development in early March 1990. The concept was the idea of Lieutenant General Floyd Baird, who told the soon-to-be President Julius Knudsen in February 1990: "One must have automaton in the defense of what we as a people are prideful of. The network is a concept tried everywhere; now we expand that here, and trust ourselves."

1994-1995: The Privatization Of The System, Launch Of Ortra Search

In 1994, a year after the founding of Stanford Cellular, talks began on an idea to privatize the IDN, not only due to high maintenance costs but also due to the need for a native search engine for public websites. Defense Secretary Bonnie Jeffers said in meetings on the matter: "Google will never cater to our people. That is our job as a government, and we need to let the economy manage that ideal." On March 22nd, 1994, the Department of Defense announced the selling of the IDN and all patents etc. tied to it. There were no interested buyers until September 5th, 1994, when a soldier by the name of Dimitry Asalov within the deeply-rooted Asalov Family pitched a SLO$90M buyout, which the military relunctantly accepted on October 5th, 1994 after no other buyers showed their interest.

The sale was made official a month later on November 5th, 1994, and Dimitry immediately got to work, hiring many foreign programmers to assist in converting the IDN over to a public and easy to use search engine for the web. On February 11th, 1995, a public demo of the "Internet Searcher" was made available at internetsearcher.mk after the .mk TLD was formed just a month prior. In April, the name was announced as "Ortra Search" with a slated availability of June 1995. The launch ended up being delayed by a month due to bureaucratic issues with forming the company, however on July 1st, 1995, it finally launched, with the company launched 10 days later on July 10th.

1996-2000: Growth & Introduction of Surgaan

Ortra Search being the first accessible search platform in Makko Oko made it an instant hit, before 1997 when Makko Oko would finally be connected to the outside internet however that did not hamper growth as Ortra Search was the only one at the time available in Makuri, the nation's native tongue. In 1998 it was evident that the internet would become a new daily part of our lives with new things being invented every day, and so Ortra Founder and CEO Dimitry Asalov announced Ortra Surgaan, which was the world's first image searcher. At the time, privacy advocates worried about the potential to stalk people using it, and government interests worried about national security implications however Dimitry agreed to reduce the effectiveness of the engine and restrict its usage against certain types of photos, which was a technological first.

In June 1998, Ortra introduced advertisements to raise revenue and become profitable and it quickly became a moneymaker. Originally advertisements were introduced on just the start page of Ortra Search as a demo, before being expanded into the search results and by 2000, ads prior to being taken to your requested page. Ortra Surgaan would no longer be ad-free starting in February 1999.

2001-2003: Dimitry's Resignation & Before Ortra Videos

Before Ortra Videos, there was WebPlex, which was the world's first video sharing platform. WebPlex was launched as a spinoff of a corporate version of WebPlex run by Vyrant on February 26th, 2000 in limited beta, opening up to the public in May a few months later. WebPlex was noticeably ad-free, with the internet becoming increasingly bloated with ads, the public took notice with this and Ortra came under attack for the increasing amount of advertisements placed on its products since 1998, getting to a point that the government launched an inquiry into the finances and accounting of both the company and its CEO, Dimitry Asalov.

On June 18th, 2000, Ortra Surgaan Project Manager Sidney Locascio announced the brand new "image verification" feature, which was described as a "way to verify the origins of photos to determine if something is true or false". This feature received a lot of pushback from privacy advocates, photographers and the general public, however the feature ultimately stayed, but was restricted after Parliament voted on a bill to grant new privacy protections to people in the digital age, which would ultimately become the New Digital Privacy Act. An ensuing lawsuit afterwards led the company to lose some reputation, however remained relatively profitable, only losing some advertisers.

Dimitry's woes would increase after a female candidate for a job at Ortra sued the company accusing them of gender discrimination in August 2000. The candidate, who's name was sealed by the court for protection, won the case and ordered Ortra to pay out MKD$15.5M in damages plus legal fees. This all culuminated to a large DDoS attack on January 1st, 2001 when Ortra's core infrastructure was taken down for a week, tanking the company's revenue and bringing down all Ortra services including Search and Surgaan in addition to preventing advertising payouts from going through. The downtime came with an attributed message from the threat actor: "Resign or go down with the ship Dimishit, because you really are one" It is estimated that the downtime of Ortra Search led over half the nation's internet traffic to disappear, and it subsequently led to much lower traffic volumes on domestic and international sites.

The events of January 2001 led Dimitry to announce his resignation from the company effective immediately on February 4th, 2001 after the government announced that a probe into Ortra's infrastructure planning was launched by Parliament. His replacement was announced shortly thereafter on February 10th, 2001 as Christopher Bellini, formerly the company's Chief Privacy Officer. Christopher announced as his first action as CEO was to hold annual Ortra Platform Conferences, or ORPCs for short where the company would announce its plans over a year, sometimes two or three and provide updates on existing products and announcements.

The first ORPC was held in July 2001 in Sakov, Makko Oko at a concert venue and unveiled the plan to launch the OrtraNet, later known as Ortra Box, which was to be a free-to-use email service with no strings attached and no ads, a first since Ortra first started. The public at the time was receptive to the idea, but skeptical on the truthfulness of it being ad-free, however, when OrtraNet went into private beta in November the same year, they were pleased with the results. The service officially launched as Ortra.NET on March 3rd, 2002 and had 1.2 million users sign up during its first month. Historians say that Ortra.NET helped the nation's internet adoption rate keep pace with the rest of the world, and at some parts, outpace them.

Products & Services

Online Services:

• Ortra Surgaan - An extension of Ortra Search, it allows users to search for photos and find the originating location of any uploaded photo
• Ortra Search - Allows users to find websites, news and other assortments that are located at URL's on the internet. Available in English and Makuri.
• Ortra Videos - Allows users to upload videos that are of 1 hour in duration or less, broadcast livestreams, and to find videos hosted on other platforms. Service provided in English only.
• Ortra Box - Provides users with a @box.mail or @ortra.net.mk email address. Service provided in English and Makuri. Optional addons include storage.
• Ortra Money - Provides users with a secure way to pay in-person using their phone, and is a payment system that merchants can implement online. Service provided in English and Makuri.
• Ortra Intelligence - For government use only, it provides users with customizable database solutions for storing anything from military records to terrorism intelligence. Service provided in English and Makuri.
• Ortra+ - Allows users to communicate with other users and network. It is a social media platform funded by an experiment of the government, which turned out to be successful. Service provided in Makuri only.

Products:

• Ven - A mixed-source mobile operating system developed by Ortra.