Talk about a blast from the past. Earthlink was one of the key players in the early days of the internet, back when dial-up was the norm and anything above 56k was considered "high-speed." Back then they competed with companies like AOL and Compuserve. Earthlink used to have a presence in Downtown San Jose, and one of the high-rises even donned the company insignia for several years. After the bubble burst, they ended up consolidating offices.
Now Earthlink is coming back to San Jose, and they are doing so in style. The company is planning to open a huge new data center for its cloud-hosting platform along with a sales office. To top it off they are even acquiring a Sunnyvale-based company called CenterBeam. They are making a big investment in Silicon Valley, so it looks like they are planning to stick around for quite a while this time.
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SVBJ
Blast from past indeed! Josh, was Earthlink at one time Netcom, or were those two separate companies?
ReplyDeleteIn 1997, Rieger turned the presidency of Netcom over to David W. Garrison, formerly of SkyTel. Under his direction, the company ventured into the business services market with web hosting and hi-speed business connectivity products. On October 13 of the same year, ICG Communications announced in a press release that it had "entered into a definitive agreement and plan of merger with NETCOM On-Line Communication Services, Inc.". In February 1999, ICG sold off the Netcom's U.S. subscribers and other assets to MindSpring for $245 million in cash and stock. MindSpring later merged with EarthLink in 2000. Netcom Canada was bought by and was eventually merged with Metronet (the first Canadian CLEC), and AT&T Canada, with the combined entity acquiring the AT&T Canada name (later, in the summer of 2003, this entity dropped the AT&T name and rebranded itself as Allstream). Meanwhile, at the time of the MindSpring acquisition, Netcom Internet Limited in the United Kingdom became GTS Netcom, and in March 2003, it became part of the Viatel Group along with another business ISP, Cybernet. On January 12, Netcom Internet Ltd was rebranded to Viatel. (Source: Wikipedia)
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