Red Swoosh
Red Swoosh was a peer-to-peer file sharing company founded by Travis Kalanick and Michael Todd in 2001 and acquired by Akamai Technologies in 2007. The Red Swoosh technology included a centralized directory that indexed online clients and caches. The software downloads and sideloads video multicasts from websites that support the Red Swoosh technology. The Red Swoosh peercasting tool is a browser extension that caches data, reflecting and sharing files delivered through the "Swoosh network" or Distributed Network.
| Industry | Peer-to-peer file sharing |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2001 |
| Founder |
|
| Defunct | April 12, 2007 |
| Fate | Acquired by Akamai Technologies |
Red Swoosh utilizes a proprietary, peer-to-peer (P2P) file distribution protocol designed for bandwidth efficiency in the transfer of large media files.
The company offers a software development kit (SDK) for third-party development. This includes support for predelivery, RSS feeds, web widgets, and JavaScript applications. There is also a forum and a wiki available for the developer community.
Acquisition
On April 12, 2007, Red Swoosh was acquired in an all-stock transaction by Akamai Technologies. The acquisition was valued at approximately $19 million (not including earn-outs).[1] [2][3]