EarthLink

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EarthLink Inc.
Type Public (NASDAQ: ELNK)
Founded 1994
Headquarters Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Key people Mike Lunsford, Kevin M Dotts
Products ISP
Revenue $1.29 billion (2005) USD
Employees 1,732 (2006) industry = Internet & Communications
Website www.earthlink.net

EarthLink (NASDAQ: ELNK), is an Internet service provider headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. It claims 5.4 million members (2004 estimate).

Contents

[edit] Business

Part of the EarthLink World Headquarters in Atlanta.
Part of the EarthLink World Headquarters in Atlanta.

EarthLink provides a variety of Internet connection types, including dial-up, DSL, satellite, and cable. EarthLink also offers different types of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone services. One type provides both DSL and home voice service which makes VOIP service practical for DSL users. The support section of the EarthLink Web site has detailed instructions for configuring Windows and Mac OS to access the company's network, either with the EarthLink software or with those operating systems' standard networking features. Linux is not listed on EarthLink's support pages.

In addition to selling the company's various Internet connections online and by phone, EarthLink operates retail kiosks in all Fry's Electronics stores, manned by two to five representatives directly employed by EarthLink, rather than Fry's. For signing up in-store, EarthLink offers customers special promotions not available elsewhere (including cash back and extended discounts). Services sold at the kiosks include PeoplePC dial-up, PeoplePC Accelerated dial-up, EarthLink Accelerated dial-up, EarthLink High Speed (including Cable, DSL, and Satellite), and EarthLink Wireless's AirCard, which provides Internet service over digital cellular signals across the United States. EarthLink provides the large majority of its users with free anti-virus software (Windows 2000 & XP only).

EarthLink is currently working with the cities of Philadelphia and Anaheim in their development and implementation of the city wide wi-fi Internet access. EarthLink has also teamed up with Google in to do the same in San Francisco.

[edit] History

EarthLink was founded in 1994 by Sky Dayton, supposedly after he spent an entire week trying to configure his own computer for Internet access. He then soon realized the market for user-friendly ISPs. From a modest beginning of ten modems, the company has grown to include more than 2,000 POP numbers in the US—and more than 40,000 internationally.

On February 4, 2000, the company (then based in Pasadena, California) merged with Atlanta-founded MindSpring, making it the second-largest ISP in the U.S.— after AOL.

On June 10, 2002, EarthLink acquired PeoplePC, a value-priced dial-up service that has more dial-up access numbers than any other ISP (including AOL). PeoplePC's direct competitors are NetZero and Netscape.

In July 2005, EarthLink announced that it was closing the last of its in-house American call centers, though the company still has American call centers via out-source telecom companies. In the late 1990s, when all of EarthLink's technical support was provided through in-house call centers, the company promoted the knowledgeability of its agents specializing in its service, yet it continues to do so with its current staff. EarthLink cut 2,600 jobs in 2003 and 2004. [1] Although EarthLink has reduced its expenses from $283,357,000 in 2005 to $227,285,000 in 2003, their earnings are shrinking. In 2003, EarthLink reported an income of $1,401,930, but by 2005, it was only $1,290,072.[2]

In October 2006, EarthLink reported its first quarterly loss in more than 2-1/2 years, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Revenue from dial-up customers dropped 16.8 percent as the company lost 320,000 of those customers from the previous year. The company predicts another loss in the fourth quarter of 2006 of $15-25 million due to investment in Helio.[3]

[edit] EarthLink and Scientology

It has been charged by some researchers of the controversial Church of Scientology that EarthLink is a front organization for Scientology. According to skeptictank.org:

Numerous individuals who have worked for this cult front company in the past have come forward to describe the fact that EarthLink's help desk's employees are ordered to claim that the Scientology crime syndicate doesn't own and run EarthLink.NET. (See comments by ex-employees of EarthLink.net on The Skeptic Tank's web site.) The fact is, the security of one's e-mail which flows through these two companies is highly suspect and users who subscribe to either of these services should consider very carefully the history of the Scientology crime syndicate.[4]

In March 1998, the weekly San Jose Metro ran an article called "Missing Links", examining the Scientology-EarthLink controversy:

Electronic free-speech advocates are concerned about the Scientology leanings of EarthLink founder Sky Dayton and the church's history of litigation over copyright infringements on the Net ... Dayton is a vocal follower of the Church of Scientology who in the early days surrounded himself with upper management and private financiers who were also Scientologists ... As the company has grown, EarthLink executives have tried to distance the company from its Scientology roots, and for good reason. Unlike other religions, Scientology has earned a reputation for dragging ISPs into court for alleged copyright violations committed by private subscribers, something which electronic-privacy advocates believe could erode free discourse on the Net.[5]

Dayton and his two financial backers are Scientologists. When this fact created controversy in the media, Dayton asserted that the idea that EarthLink was owned by the Church of Scientology was absurd, making the comparison, "It was like I'm Jewish, therefore EarthLink was owned by the state of Israel."[6]

[edit] SIPshare

EarthLink SIPshare is a Session Initiation Protocol-based file sharing network made by Clay Shirky and David Beckemeyer.

[edit] Reed Slatkin

In 2002, when co-founder Reed Slatkin's Ponzi scheme made headlines, EarthLink released a statement:

"The legal proceedings concerning ex-Board member Reed Slatkin do not involve or impact EarthLink or EarthLink funds. The proceedings involve Mr. Slatkin and his personal clients." [1]

On November 8, 2006, the Associated Press reported that Slatkin would pay back 3.5 million dollars of illegally obtained funds:

"Three groups affiliated with the Church of Scientology have agreed to return $3.5 million they received from a pyramid scheme operated by Reed Slatkin, the disgraced co-founder of EarthLink Inc." [2]

[edit] Helio

On January 26, 2005, EarthLink announced that it had formed an agreement with Korean cellphone service provider SK Telecom to jointly own and operate a new MVNO in the U.S. wireless marketplace. The name of this new company is Helio. The network was expected to commence operations sometime in spring 2006. Helio's business model revolves around providing advanced wireless devices not commonly seen for sale in the US market to technology-savvy consumers.

Aluria Software
Type Wholly Owned Subsidiary of EarthLink, Inc
Founded 1999
Headquarters Maitland, Florida
Industry Computer Security
Products Internet Security Suite
Slogan Security Made simple
Website http://www.aluriasoftware.com

[edit] Aluria Software, LLC

Aluria Software, LLC was a privately held company founded in 1999 and based in Orlando, Florida. On August 22, 2005 EarthLink, Inc. announced an agreement to acquire Aluria Software's assets; thus making Aluria Software a division of EarthLink. [7]

Aluria Software develops and markets security and protection products for consumers, small businesses, and enterprise customers.

[edit] Controversy

In August 2006 EarthLink teamed up with Yahoo and Barefruit to redirect web browser users accessing nonexistent domains to a page containing sponsored search results, ads, and a Yahoo search form. The DNS protocol requires that a query for a nonexistent domain must return the "NXDOMAIN" error response. Instead of this response, EarthLink's DNS servers return several IP addresses for the HTTP servers that implement their redirection service. While such redirection might be helpful to users of some web browsers, it breaks the functionality of many other Internet applications, which assume that the DNS is implemented according to the standard specifications. EarthLink's redirection also prevents the user's web browser from detecting NXDOMAIN errors and handling them according to the user's preference.

Comments left in the official EarthLink blog announcing the feature [3] and news aggregators like Slashdot [4] have been overwhelmingly negative. In 2003, VeriSign implemented a similar feature called Site Finder for all .com and .net domains. VeriSign ultimately reversed the change after the ensuing controversy and under pressure from ICANN. While Site Finder affected all Internet users, EarthLink's redirection feature is only applicable to EarthLink ISP customers. In contrast with VeriSign's policy of not mentioning the effect of Site Finder on non-HTTP-based services, EarthLink says it is trying to minimize the impact on such uses of DNS, which is impossible since a DNS query doesn't contain any information that can be used by the DNS server to determine whether the addresses obtained from the query will be used for HTTP or other traffic.

After about a month of complaints on the blog, EarthLink made available two DNS servers that it says are unaffected by the service and should properly return NXDOMAIN for all 'dead' domain names. [5] These must be manually configured on machines of customers who wish to use them. The company says it will not provide technical support for these alternate servers.

During 2005 and 2006 EarthLink began blacklisting email from a large number of smaller hosting companies to combat spam. In January 2007, Dreamhost, the world's 19th-ranked web hosting company, had been blocked for a number of weeks and said that its technicians were unable to get past EarthLink's lowest tier of technical support [6].

[edit] CEO steps down

On November 21, 2006, EarthLink reported in a press release that its CEO, Garry Betty, had been diagnosed with a serious form of cancer which would have required him to take an undetermined leave of absence. The company's Board of Directors named Mike Lunsford, Vice-President of Voice and Access, as interim CEO. Betty lost his battle with cancer and passed away on January 2, 2007.[8][9]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Husted, Bill. "EarthLink to Cut 180 Customer Service Workers; Work to be Outsourced Overseas." Atlanta Journal Constitution. 26 Jul. 2005. Business Section. 1D
  2. ^ U.S. Institutional Database. 20 Nov. 2006. EarthLink Incorporated.
  3. ^ Leith, Scott. "Quarterly Loss Drives EarthLink Stock Down." Atlanta Journal Constitution. 20 Oct. 2006. Business Section 2G.
  4. ^ http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/elcoslnk.htm
  5. ^ http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/03.19.98/scientology-9811.html
  6. ^ Larry Armstrong. "The Mac of Internet Providers." Business Week December 15, 1997
  7. ^ http://www.earthlink.net/about/press/pr_aluria_acquisition/
  8. ^ Keefe, Bob. "EarthLink: Illness Drives Leader Shuffle." Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 22 Nov. 2006. Business Section 1C.
  9. ^ Roberts, Paul F. "EarthLink CEO Betty dead at 49", InfoWorld, 2007-01-03. Retrieved on January 3, 2007.

[edit] External links

Business data
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