History
In July 2006 OpenDNS was launched by computer scientist and entrepreneur David Ulevitch, providing recursive DNS resolution. It received venture capital funding from Minor Ventures, led by CNET founder Halsey Minor. In October 2006 OpenDNS launched PhishTank, an online collaborative anti-phishing database. Before 2007 OpenDNS was using the DNS Update API from DynDNS to handle updates from users with dynamic IPs.[23] In June 2007 OpenDNS started advanced web filtering to optionally block "adult content" for their free accounts. Nand Mulchandani, former head of VMware's security group, left VMware to join OpenDNS as new CEO in November 2008, replacing founder David Ulevitch, who remained as the company's chief technology officer.[24] David Ulevitch resumed his post as CEO of OpenDNS in late 2009.[25]
Sequoia Capital and Greylock purchased the majority of shares held by Halsey Minor in July 2009 in a secondary transaction. Then, in conjunction with DAG Ventures, all remaining shares held by Minor were purchased in a similar fashion in early 2010.[26] In June 2010 OpenDNS launched "FamilyShield", a service designed to filter out sites with pornographic content. The service uses the DNS addresses 208.67.222.123 and 208.67.220.123.[27] The World Economic Forum announced the company as a Technology Pioneer for 2011.[28] In March 2012 Dan Hubbard, former CTO at Websense, joined OpenDNS as CTO.[29] The OpenDNS Security Labs were founded in December 2012, serving as a hub for research at the company. OpenDNS launched Security Graph, a security intelligence and threat detection engine in February 2013, followed by a Series B funding round. In May 2014 OpenDNS announced a Series C funding round totaling US$35 million, with new investors Glynn Capital Management, Northgate Capital, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Lumia Capital, Evolution Equity Partners, Cisco, Chris Sacca, Naval Ravikant, Elad Gill, as well as previous backers Greylock Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Sutter Hill Ventures.
On August 27, 2015, Cisco acquired OpenDNS for US$635 million in an all-cash transaction, plus retention-based incentives for OpenDNS.[30][31] OpenDNS's business services were renamed Cisco Umbrella; home products retained the OpenDNS name. Cisco said that it intended to continue development of OpenDNS with its other cloud-based security products, and that it would continue its existing services.[32]
Discontinued advertising
OpenDNS previously earned a portion of its revenue by resolving a domain name to an OpenDNS server when the name is not otherwise defined in DNS. This had the effect that if a user typed a non-existent name in a URL in a web browser, the user saw an OpenDNS search page. Advertisers paid OpenDNS to have advertisements for their sites on this page. This behavior is similar to VeriSign's previous Site Finder or the redirects many ISP's place on their own DNS servers.[33] OpenDNS said that the advertising revenue paid for the free customized DNS service.[34] It was discontinued on June 6, 2014; OpenDNS said this was because of their move towards a security focus in their business.[35][36]
