OBONGO names Soraya Bittencourt new Vice President of Engineering

SAN FRANCISCO (December 8, 1999) - Obongo Inc., a leading provider of e-commerce tools has named Soraya Bittencourt as its new vice president of engineering. With a diverse background that includes launching the first Latin American communications satellite, Bittencourt most recently was Group Program Manager for four of Microsoft's client/server/Web-based financial applications.

Bittencourt is also credited for creating Microsoft Expedia; she sold the idea to Microsoft Chief Executive Bill Gates and proceeded to build and manage the Expedia team.

"Obongo's engineering and product strategy teams will benefit immensely from Soraya's expertise," said John Hunt, Obongo's CEO and founder. "Her background in engineering is exceptionally varied, and her decision to join Obongo underscores the tremendous strength of the product and the team we have assembled."

Obongo Inc. recently launched its Obongo Companion, a browser assistant that enables, safer, easier and faster shopping for users, and generates more users and fewer abandoned shopping carts for Web sites. Obongo users can forget the monotonous and repetitive tasks of remembering passwords and filling out forms.

In addition, Obongo helps them search the Web, compare prices at online shops and direct incoming e-mail to multiple accounts. The browser assistant is free and installs in less than ten seconds from www.obongo.com.

In addition to her tenure at Microsoft, Bittencourt spent time as Development Manager at Lotus Corporation, and was Director of Software at Number Nine Computer. She holds a BSEE from Centro Federal de Educacao Tecnologica do Rio de Janeiro as well as an MS in Telecommunications and Computer Science from Universidade Gama Filho. She also held special student status at MIT in the late eighties.

"Obongo has an outstanding business model," said Bittencourt. "The engineering team has already done an incredible job with the software, and I look forward to the challenge of making it even better. I will ensure that Obongo users have the best tools to seamlessly enhance their experience on the Web."

About Obongo

Obongo provides solutions to help make e-commerce safer, faster and easier. These include tools to remember passwords, compare prices, fill out forms, receive e-shopping rebates, and allow flexible e-mail forwarding. The Obongo Companion, which can be installed for free in less than ten seconds from www.obongo.com, provides a simpler online shopping experience for consumers and generates increased user traffic with fewer "abandoned shopping carts" for Web sites.