When you think of one percent of something, it’s usually not a very big number. But in some cases it is. Like when you’re talking about all of the users of the Internet in the world.
Today, OpenDNS is announcing that over one percent of the world’s Internet users are using its services. It’s the first DNS provider to hit such a milestone, and it means that over 18 million people are using the service to access the web in a way that founder and CEO David Ulevitch calls “safer, faster, smarter and more reliable.“
And that usage number has doubled in just the last 12 months, according to Ulevitch.
That type of growth is important because a new, big time player just entered the ring: Google. But despite the big name, and the right price (free), the results for Google’s DNS offering have varied. And in a test we ran with Google’s own Namebench product, OpenDNS easily beat Google in DNS speed.
The truth is that most users have no idea what any of these DNS services do, or how to go about changing them. So companies like OpenDNS have to rely on partnerships with schools (they have over 25,000), partnerships with large corporations (they have them with many Fortune 500 companies), or parents really worried about what their children are surfing for on the web. But again, the growth is clearly happening, and actually picking up speed, according to Ulevitch, so that’s a very good sign.
An even better sign: OpenDNS has been profitable since 2007.
[photo: flickr/jurvetson]
OpenDNS is the world’s largest, fastest-growing DNS service provider. Through innovative uses of the DNS, the company is able to provide free parental controls (porn filtering), phishing protection, and other advanced services for consumers and network administrators alike. In October 2009, OpenDNS began offering an Enterprise service, which includes malware protection, delegated administration and block page bypass, in addition reliable DNS and Web content filtering. OpenDNS was founded in November, 2005 by DNS expert and entrepreneur David Ulevitch. The company was originally...
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