[gressquel]

I think Rapidshare earned tons of money. At one time RS was the go-to filehost for pirated material. They had almost anything you wanted, and they seldom removed files.

Then came the FBI raid against various filehosts. I remember few of the other hosts got taken down and charged, while others shut their site down as precaution. I remember Rapidshare starting their decline during this phase, something tells me Rapidshare did it on purpose and 'ran away' with the earned money before the feds got them.

Well thats my theory :)