Limelight Networks
More info
- Released
- 2001–2024
- Type
- CDN provider
- Successor
- Edgio
The Arizona CDN that spent two decades as Akamai's challenger, remembered mostly for a patent fight that went all the way to the US Supreme Court.
Limelight was founded in Tempe in 2001 and built its own content delivery network, leaning heavily on video and software downloads. Akamai sued for patent infringement as early as 2006, and the question of who infringes when the customer performs one of the steps itself went to the Supreme Court in 2014 and back to the Federal Circuit. Limelight paid $54 million in 2016 to make it stop.
In 2022 it bought Edgecast from Yahoo and renamed itself Edgio. The merger brought more customers but not more money, and Edgio filed for bankruptcy in 2024. Akamai picked up part of the customer base — the old rival got the last word.