Inktomi
Encyclopedia
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
company that provided software for Internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
s. It was founded in 1996 by UC Berkeley professor Eric Brewer
Eric Brewer (computer scientist)
Eric A. Brewer is the main inventor of a wireless networking scheme called WiLDNet which promises to bring low-cost connectivity to rural areas of the developing world. He was made a tenured professor at UC Berkeley at the age of 32. In 1996, Brewer co-founded Inktomi Corporation. He is known for...
and graduate student Paul Gauthier. The company was initially founded based on the real-world success of the search engine they developed at the university. After the bursting of the dot-com bubble
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
, Inktomi was acquired by Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
History
Inktomi's software was incorporated in the widely-used HotBotHotBot
HotBot is a web search engine launched in May 1996 by Wired Magazine. It is currently owned by Lycos. HotBot became a popular tool with search results served by the Inktomi database and directory results provided originally by LookSmart and then the Open Directory Project since mid-1999...
search engine, which displaced AltaVista
AltaVista
AltaVista is a web search engine owned by Yahoo!. AltaVista was once one of the most popular search engines but its popularity declined with the rise of Google...
as the leading web-crawler-based search engine, and which was in turn displaced by Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
. In a talk given to a UC Berkeley seminar on Search Engines in October 2005, Eric Brewer credited much of the AltaVista displacement to technical differences of scale.
The company went on to develop Traffic Server
Traffic Server
The Apache Traffic Server is a modular, high-performance reverse proxy and forward proxy server, generally comparable to Nginx and Squid. It was created by Inktomi, and distributed as a commercial product called the Inktomi Traffic Server, before Inktomi was acquired by Yahoo!...
, a proxy
Proxy server
In computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server...
cache
Web cache
A web cache is a mechanism for the temporary storage of web documents, such as HTML pages and images, to reduce bandwidth usage, server load, and perceived lag...
for web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
traffic and on-demand streaming media
Streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...
. Traffic Server found a limited marketplace due to several factors, but was deployed by several large service providers including AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
. One of the things that Traffic Server did was to transcode images down to a smaller size for AOL dialup users, leading many websites to provide special noncacheable pages with the phrase, "AOL Users Click Here" to navigate to these pages.
In November 1999 Inktomi acquired Webspective; in August 2000 Inktomi acquired Ultraseek Server from Disney
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
's Go.com
Go.com
Go.com is a web portal first launched by Jeff Gold, and now operated by the Walt Disney Internet Group, which is a part of The Walt Disney Company. The portal includes content from ABC News, ESPN, and FamilyFun.com, all of which are associated with Disney and are hosted under a .go.com name...
; in September, 2000, Inktomi acquired FastForward Networks; in December 2000, Inktomi acquired the Content Bridge Business Unit from Adero, a content delivery network, which had formed the Content Bridge Alliance with Inktomi, AOL and a number of other ISPs, hosting providers and IP transport providers; and in June 2001 Inktomi acquired eScene Networks. Webspective developed technology for synchronizing and managing content across a host of distributed servers to be used in clustered or distributed load-balancing. Fast Forward developed software for the distribution of live streaming media over the Internet using "app-level" multicast technology. eScene Networks developed software that provided an integrated workflow for the management and publishing of video content (now owned by Media Publisher, Inc.). With this combination of technologies, Inktomi became an "arms merchant" to a growing number of content delivery network
Content Delivery Network
A content delivery network or content distribution network is a system of computers containing copies of data placed at various nodes of a network....
(CDN) service providers. Inktomi stock peaked with a split-adjusted price of $241 a share in March 2000.
In earlier acquisitions Inktomi acquired C2B and Impulse Buy Networks, both companies which had pioneered the comparison shopping space and that had pioneered the performance-based marketing market, with over 4 million products registered in the service in 1998, and serving millions of merchandise product offers daily across 20,000 websites including Yahoo!, MSN
MSN
MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.The range of services offered by MSN has changed since its...
, and AOL shopping. Merchants paid a percentage of sales and or a cost per click for traffic sent to their websites—ultimately this model became known as pay per click
Pay per click
Pay per click is an Internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, where advertisers pay the publisher when the ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market...
and was perfected by Google and Overture Services, Inc.
With the financial collapse of the service provider industry and overall burst of the dot-com bubble
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
, Inktomi lost most of its customer base and ultimately was acquired by Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
in 2002 for $1.63 a share (or $235 million). In a separate transaction, the Ultraseek Server product (renamed Inktomi Enterprise Search) was sold to competitor Verity, Inc. in late 2002.
In 2006, the technology behind the Inktomi Proxy Server was acquired by Websense
Websense
Websense is a San Diego-based company specializing in Web security gateway software. It enables clients to block access to chosen categories of websites.-History:Websense was founded by Phil Trubey in 1994...
, which has modified it and included it their Websense Security Gateway solution.
In 2009, Yahoo! asked to enter Traffic Server into incubation with the Apache
Apache Software Foundation
The Apache Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation to support Apache software projects, including the Apache HTTP Server. The ASF was formed from the Apache Group and incorporated in Delaware, U.S., in June 1999.The Apache Software Foundation is a decentralized community of developers...
Incubator, which was accepted in July. The original Inktomi Traffic Server source, with additional Yahoo! modifications, was donated to the open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
community that same year. In April 2010, the Apache Traffic Server
Traffic Server
The Apache Traffic Server is a modular, high-performance reverse proxy and forward proxy server, generally comparable to Nginx and Squid. It was created by Inktomi, and distributed as a commercial product called the Inktomi Traffic Server, before Inktomi was acquired by Yahoo!...
top-level project was officially created, marking the official acceptance of the new project.
Acquisitions
In September 1998 Inktomi acquired C2B Technologies, adding a shopping engine technology to its portfolio; In April 1999 Inktomi acquired Impulse Buy Network, adding 400 merchants to its shopping engine and performance based business shopping model. ; in November 1999 Inktomi acquired Webspective; in August 2000 Inktomi acquired Ultraseek Server from DisneyThe Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
's Go.com
Go.com
Go.com is a web portal first launched by Jeff Gold, and now operated by the Walt Disney Internet Group, which is a part of The Walt Disney Company. The portal includes content from ABC News, ESPN, and FamilyFun.com, all of which are associated with Disney and are hosted under a .go.com name...
; in September, 2000, Inktomi acquired FastForward Networks; in December 2000, Inktomi acquired the Content Bridge Business Unit from Adero, a content delivery network, which had formed the Content Bridge Alliance with Inktomi, AOL and a number of other ISPs, hosting providers and IP transport providers; and in June 2001 Inktomi acquired eScene Networks. Webspective developed technology for synchronizing and managing content across a host of distributed servers to be used in clustered or distributed load-balancing. Fast Forward developed software for the distribution of live streaming media over the Internet using "app-level" multicast technology. eScene Networks developed software that provided an integrated workflow for the management and publishing of video content (now owned by Qumu, Inc.). With this combination of technologies, Inktomi became an "arms merchant" to a growing number of Content Delivery Network
Content Delivery Network
A content delivery network or content distribution network is a system of computers containing copies of data placed at various nodes of a network....
(CDN) service providers.
Inktomi name and logo
According to the Inktomi website, "The company's name, pronounced 'INK-tuh-me', is derived from a Lakota Indian legend about a trickster spider character. InktomiInktomi
Inktomi Corporation was a California company that provided software for Internet service providers. It was founded in 1996 by UC Berkeley professor Eric Brewer and graduate student Paul Gauthier. The company was initially founded based on the real-world success of the search engine they developed...
is known for his ability to defeat larger adversaries through wit and cunning." The tri-color, nested cube logo was created by Tom Lamar in 1996.
Corporate officers
- David C. Peterschmidt – Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
- Dr. Eric A. Brewer – Chief Scientist
- Timothy J. Burch – Vice President of Human Resources
- Ted Hally – Senior Vice President and General Manager of Network Products
- Jerry M. Kennelly – Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary
- Al Shipp – Senior Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations
- Timothy Stevens – Senior Vice President of Business Affairs, General Counsel and Assistant Secretary
- Steve Hill – Vice President of Europe
Board of directors
- David C. Peterschmidt – Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Inktomi Corporation
- Dr. Eric A. Brewer – Chief Scientist, Inktomi Corporation
- Frank Gill – Executive Vice President, Intel CorporationIntel CorporationIntel Corporation is an American multinational semiconductor chip maker corporation headquartered in Santa Clara, California, United States and the world's largest semiconductor chip maker, based on revenue. It is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most...
- Fredric W. Harman – General Partner, Oak Investment PartnersOak Investment PartnersOak Investment Partners is a private equity firm focusing on venture capital investments in companies developing communications systems, information technology, new Internet media, healthcare services and retail....
- Alan ShugartAlan ShugartAlan Field Shugart was an American engineer, entrepreneur and business executive whose career defined the modern computer disk drive industry.-Life:...
– Chief Executive Officer, Al Shugart International