That's 18 million people

Mar 23, 2010 11:53 GMT  ·  By

Their DNS service is not something that a regular user worries about. In fact it's not something that the regular user knows what it is. And that's the way it should be, at least in a perfect world. In reality, plenty of ISPs are exploiting DNS for their own purposes, at the expense of the user, and a need exists for services like OpenDNS, a free and open, if you haven't guessed from the name, DNS provider. Now, the company, which has been offering its services for several years, says it serves over one percent of Internet users.

"We see this milestone as incredibly significant, and a true testament to both the unmatched quality of the OpenDNS service and the world’s demand for a better DNS service," OpenDNS Founder and CEO David Ulevitch said.

"One percent of all of the world’s Internet users is a momentous achievement and our growth rate indicates that [the] number will climb at an even more rapid pace going forward. As awareness about the importance of DNS security broadens, OpenDNS is proud to be the clear trailblazer and innovator in our space," he added.

One percent of Internet users may sound pretty impressive, but it adds up to just over 18 million users. Not too shabby, but it's not going to blow anyone away in a world where Facebook has well over 400 million users. We're talking about very different products here, so there's really no comparison.

OpenDNS has managed to reach this point by aggressively pursuing several markets. It has managed to get 25,000 schools to use its service and even Fortune 500 corporations have implemented it. OpenDNS aims to provide a faster and more reliable DNS service, but also has additional services, like content filtering and security features. Google has also launched a similar service, the Google Public DNS with a similar goal of speeding things up.