Inktomi’s History
– Inktomi was founded in January 1996 by Eric Brewer and Paul Gauthier at the University of California, Berkeley.
– The company was initially based on the web search engine developed at the university.
– HotBot was the first search engine to use Inktomi’s search technology.
– In June 1998, Inktomi raised $36 million in an initial public offering.
– Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Disney partnered with Inktomi due to the success of HotBot.
Acquisitions and Expansions (1998-1999)
– In September 1998, Inktomi acquired C2B Technologies for $95 million in stock, adding shopping engine technology to its portfolio.
– The company raised additional capital in November 1998 at a 688% premium to its IPO price.
– In April 1999, Inktomi acquired Impulse Buy Network, adding 400 merchants to its shopping engine.
– In November 1999, Inktomi acquired Webspective, a company that developed technology for content management across distributed servers.
– Inktomi received revenue based on a percentage of sales and/or a pay-per-click model.
Expansion in the 21st Century
– In March 2000, Inktomi’s stock peaked at $241 per share.
– In August 2000, Inktomi acquired Ultraseek Server from The Walt Disney Company’s Go.com.
– In September 2000, Inktomi acquired FastForward Networks, which developed software for the distribution of live streaming media.
– In December 2000, Inktomi acquired the Content Bridge Business Unit from Adero, a content delivery network.
– In July 2001, Inktomi acquired eScene Networks, a company that developed software for video content management and publishing.
Acquisition by Yahoo!
– In 2002, Inktomi was restructured by Keyur Patel, resulting in the sale of the Ultraseek Server product to Verity.
– In March 2003, Yahoo! acquired the remaining assets of Inktomi for $241 million.
– In 2006, Websense acquired the technology behind Inktomi Proxy Server.
– In 2009, Yahoo! donated the Traffic Server technology to the Apache Software Foundation.
Miscellaneous Facts
– Inktomi Corporation was formed by UC Berkeley scientists to bring parallel processing power to commercial internet applications.
– Inktomi CEO looked to sell arms to a range of ISPs and portal sites.
– Inktomi accidentally allowed the public to access its database of spam websites.
– Yahoo! completed the acquisition of Inktomi in May 2003.
Inktomi Corporation was a company that provided software for Internet service providers (ISPs). It was incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Foster City, California, United States. Customers included Microsoft, HotBot, Amazon.com, eBay, and Walmart.
 | |
| Founded | January 1996 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Eric Brewer Paul Gauthier |
| Fate | Acquired by Yahoo! |
| Headquarters | Foster City, California |
Key people | David C. Peterschmidt (Chairman & CEO) |
| Revenue |  $112 million (2002) |
| -$500 million (2002) | |
| Total assets | $145 million (2002) |
| Total equity | $46 million (2002) |
Number of employees | 200 (November 2002) |
| Footnotes / references | |
The company developed Traffic Server, a proxy server web cache for World Wide Web traffic and on-demand streaming media which transcoded images down to a smaller size for users of dial-up Internet access. Traffic Server was deployed by several large ISPs including AOL.
In 2003, after the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the company was acquired by Yahoo! for $241 million.
The company's name, pronounced "INK-tuh-me", was derived from a Lakota legend about the trickster spider Iktomi, known for his ability to outsmart larger adversaries. The tri-color nested cube logo was created by Tom Lamar in 1996.
