J2 Global, Inc. was an American technology

holding company A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own shares of other companies ...

based in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. The company provided Internet services through two divisions: Business Cloud Services and Digital Media.

History

J2 Global was founded in December 1995 as JFax.com by

Jaye Muller Jaye Muller (born Jens Müller) is a German musician and Internet entrepreneur who performed under the name J., and later in a duo named "Muller and Patton" with American musician Ben Patton and under the name "Count Jaye" (since 2015). In 1992, ...

and

Jack Rieley John Frank Rieley III (November 24, 1942 – April 17, 2015) was an American record producer, songwriter, and disc jockey who managed the Beach Boys between mid-1970 and late 1973. He is credited with guiding them back to popular acclaim and was ...

. The company changed its registered name to J2 Global Communications, Inc. in August 2000, and again to J2 Global on December 7, 2011, dropping "Communications" from its official name to reflect "…expansion from phone-number-centric services…into complementary lines of non-phone-number-centric services." Jfax founders 1996 nyc

On November 12, 2012, J2 Global launched its digital media division with the acquisition of digital publisher Ziff Davis for $167 million in cash. On February 4, 2013, J2 Global acquired

IGN Entertainment ''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and Mass media, entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San ...

from

News Corporation News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Ne ...

. Terms of the IGN acquisition were not publicized. On March 18, 2013, the company announced it had acquired MetroFax, a

Bellevue, Washington Bellevue ( ) is a city in the Eastside region of King County, Washington, United States, located across Lake Washington from Seattle. It is the third-largest city in the Seattle metropolitan area and has variously been characterized as a s ...

provider of

Internet fax Internet fax, e-fax, or online fax is the use of the internet and internet protocols to send a fax (facsimile), rather than using a standard telephone connection and a fax machine. A distinguishing feature of Internet fax, compared to other Intern ...

ing services. On April 17, 2013, the company acquired Backup Connect BV, a Dutch provider of online backup services. On 19 November 2013, its media division

Ziff Davis Ziff Davis, Inc. is an American digital media and internet company. First founded in 1927 by William Bernard Ziff Sr. and Bernard George Davis, the company primarily owns technology-oriented media websites, online shopping-related services, an ...

announced it acquired electronics aggregating website TechBargain.com. In February 2014, J2 Global announced the acquisition of several companies: City Numbers, a UK-based worldwide provider of inbound toll-free numbers in over 80 countries;

Livedrive Livedrive is an online cloud backup and sync storage service owned by j2 Global. The company provides users with unlimited backup space and 2,000 GB or more of sync storage. Livedrive enables users to access their data from mobile phones and ...

, a UK-based provider of online backup; and Australian companies OzeFax and Faxmate. On 3 April 2014 J2 Global announced that it acquired Business Critical Software (also known as iCritical), a UK-based email security and management company. In July 2019, J2 Global acquired the

SaferVPN SaferVPN was a VPN service developed by Safer Social, Ltd. History SaferVPN was released in 2013 by Amit Bareket and Sagi Gidali. SaferVPN network infrastructure served as the basis of Barekets' and Gidalis' next company, Perimeter 81. The servic ...

brand, bringing its total number of consumer VPN services to five. In April 2021, J2 Global announced its intent to spin off part of its cloud services business as a new publicly-traded company known as Consensus, with the remainder of the company (consisting primarily of its media assets) being retained under the J2 Global name. It was later announced that J2 Global would be renamed Ziff Davis Inc. upon its completion of the spin-off: the transaction was approved by J2 Global's board in September 2021.

Brands and subsidiaries

The company operates two divisions; the "Business Cloud Services" division includes firms such as eFax, Onebox,

eVoice eVoice is a telecommunications service owned by j2 Global, Inc. (NASDAQ:JCOM). The company manages incoming and outgoing calls using virtual phone numbers. The service was initially founded by Wendell Brown, Mark Klein, and Craig Taro Gold in ...

VIPRE VIPRE Security Group, (also known as VIPRE or VIPRE Security) a brand of Ziff Davis, is a privately held cybersecurity company headquartered in New_York_City, New York. VIPRE develops cybersecurity products focused on endpoint and email security ...

, FuseMail, Campaigner, KeepItSafe, VaultLogix, Callstream, Yotta280, Mailout Interactive, GDV, BackUp Solutions, SugarSync, Nuvotera, UnityFax, Firstway Digital, Excel Micro, Web24 Group, MXSweep, City Numbers,

IPVanish IPVanish VPN (also known as IPVanish) is a VPN service based in the United States, with applications for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and Fire TV. Manual configuration is available for ChromeOS, Windows Phone, Linux, and DD-WRT rout ...

, Livedrive, MetroFax, FoneBox, TrustFax, RapidFax, Send2Fax, SFax, SRFax, and Fax.com. The company's digital media division, Ziff Davis, includes brands such as

Mashable Mashable is a digital media platform, news website and entertainment company founded by Pete Cashmore in 2005. History Mashable was founded by Pete Cashmore while living in Aberdeen, Scotland, in July 2005. Early iterations of the site were a ...

, ''

PCMag ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the present ...

'',

IGN ''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa distri ...

and

Everyday Health Everyday Health Group is a digital media company which owns websites and produces content relating to health and wellness for consumers and medical professionals. For consumers, its brands include Everyday Health, Diabetes Daily, Migraine Again ...

MyFax

MyFax is an Internet

business communication Business communication is communication that is intended to help a business achieve a fundamental goal, through information sharing between employees as well as people outside the company. It includes the process of creating, sharing, listening, ...

tool which had been provided by the

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...

-based software company

Protus Protus IP Solutions Inc. provided software-as-a-service communication tools designed for small to medium businesses. Founded in 1997, Protus was a privately held company based in Ottawa, Canada which had approximately 200 employees and over 500, ...

IP Solutions. On December 6, 2010, MyFax announced that it had been acquired by J2 Global Communications, Inc.

History

MyFax was launched by Protus IP Solutions in 2009 as an alternative to

fax Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...

machines, as it enables users to send and receive faxes from any location. MyFax has grown to over 400,000 subscribers, with approximately 20,000 new customers subscribing to the service each month. On December 6, 2010, MyFax announced that it had been acquired by J2 Global Communications, Inc, owners of eFax.

Features

Some of the features of MyFax include the ability to send and receive faxes by email and through the internet, as well as send faxes directly from

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...

Microsoft Outlook Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 software suites. Though primarily an email client, Outlook also includes such functions as Calen ...

, and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

-based applications including

Google Docs Google Docs is an online word processor included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google, which also includes: Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Sites and Google Keep. Google Do ...

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) a ...

, and

Intuit Intuit Inc. is an American business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparation application Tu ...

QuickBooks QuickBooks is an accounting software package developed and marketed by Intuit. First introduced in 1983, QuickBooks products are geared mainly toward Small and medium-sized enterprises, small and medium-sized businesses and offer On-premises sof ...

. Recently, a program has been released that allows for iPhone and BlackBerry applications to make it fully compatible with smartphones. MyFax is now owned by J2 Global, which has imposed very restrictive terms and conditions restricting the client's right to

local number portability Local number portability (LNP) for fixed lines, and full mobile number portability (FMNP) for mobile phone lines, refers to the ability of a "customer of record" of an existing fixed-line or mobile telephone number assigned by a local exchange ca ...

. Among the restrictions is a $40 US charge per number if J2 permits the number to be ported out; the company imposes many arbitrary restrictions on portability and has attempted to claim the numbers as its own property, in some cases imposing inflated penalties and unilaterally taking numbers back after they've been ported to another provider by clients.

Reviews

Before its acquisition by J2 Global, MyFax had received a few favorable reviews including an Internet Telephony magazine product of the year for 2009.

StrongVPN

StrongVPN is a commercial

VPN service A virtual private network (VPN) service provides a proxy server to help users bypass Internet censorship such as geoblocking and users who want to protect their communications against data profiling or MitM attacks on hostile networks. A wide va ...

owned by J2 Global and was founded in 2005.

History

It was founded in 2005 and is one of the oldest VPN services. It was acquired by J2 Global in 2019 from its former owner

StackPath StackPath is an American edge computing platform provider headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Its founding team was led by Lance Crosby, who also co-founded SoftLayer Technologies, acquired by IBM in 2013. Acquisitions * MaxCDN (CDN), 2016 * Stami ...

Features

It supports various protocols, including

IPsec In computing, Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) is a secure network protocol suite that authenticates and encrypts packets of data to provide secure encrypted communication between two computers over an Internet Protocol network. It is used in ...

OpenVPN OpenVPN is a virtual private network (VPN) system that implements techniques to create secure point-to-point or site-to-site connections in routed or bridged configurations and remote access facilities. It implements both client and server app ...

and WireGuard.

Reception

ZDNet ZDNET is a business technology news website owned and operated by Red Ventures. The brand was founded on April 1, 1991, as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication. Hist ...

considered StrongVPN clear and easy to use. Meanwhile,

Tom's Hardware ''Tom's Hardware'' is an online publication owned by Future plc and focused on technology. It was founded in 1996 by Thomas Pabst. It provides articles, news, price comparisons, videos and reviews on computer hardware and high technology. The si ...

considered it strong and simple, but noted the lack of information on its no-log policy.

PC World ''PC World'' (stylized as PCWorld) is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. Since 2013, it has been an online only publication. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal tech ...

considered it "a good VPN for most people".

Logging policy

StrongVPN has not directly answered questions about logging, but they are able to match an

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

to a customer.

Awards

* 2012, ''

InformationWeek ''InformationWeek'' is a digital magazine which conducts corresponding face-to-face events, virtual events, and research. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California and was first published in 1985 by CMP Media, later called Informa. The ...

'' 500 list of technology companies. * 2013, ranked number 39 in ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...

list of "America's Best Small Companies".

Litigation

J2 Global has filed

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

litigation - A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil actio ...

cases against several companies, including CallWave, Comodo, EasyLink Services International Corporation,

OpenText OpenText Corporation (also written ''opentext'') is a Canadian company that develops and sells enterprise information management (EIM) software. OpenText, headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is Canada's fourth-largest software company ...

, Packetel,

, Venali and

Zayo Group Zayo Group Holdings, Inc., or Zayo Group, is a privately held company headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, U.S. with European headquarters in London, England. The company provides communications infrastructure services, including fiber and band ...

. Some of the companies filed

counterclaim In a court of law, a party's claim is a counterclaim if one party asserts claims in response to the claims of another. In other words, if a plaintiff initiates a lawsuit and a defendant responds to the lawsuit with claims of their own against th ...

s, some of which alleged antitrust violations of Section 2 of the Sherman Act and California's Business and Professions Code §§ 16720 and 17200.

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://www.j2global.com
Internet faxing grows more popular - Wailin WongMyFax Official Website Inside MyFaxQ&A: What Is The Best Online Fax Service?
Companies based in Los Angeles Mass media companies established in 1995 Conglomerate companies established in 1995 American companies established in 1995 Online mass media companies of the United States Internet technology companies of the United States Conglomerate companies of the United States Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Cloud computing providers