Akamai: The Network-Less CDN

The Cisco Systems Remote Data Services Agreement, Executed November 7 and 8, 1996, Obligated Digital Island to Provide “a full mirror of content and applications” and to Keep It “consistent and synchronized” With CCO.cisco.com/www.cisco.com as the Origin Was Updated, Twenty-One Months Before Akamai Technologies, Inc. Was Incorporated in Delaware on August 20, 1998, and Akamai’s Own Registration Statement, Filed August 20, 1999, States That Akamai Chose to “use the existing network infrastructure of telecommunications providers instead of building our own fiber- or satellite-based network infrastructure”

Preamble: This page rests on two classes of document and on nothing else. The first is the Cisco Systems Remote Data Services Agreement, effective November 1, 1996 and executed November 7 and 8, 1996 between Digital Island, Inc. and Cisco Systems, Inc., signed for Digital Island by Mark Nichols, Director of Global Networks, and for Cisco Systems by Hervé Goguely, Director of Global Service Management, and reproduced in full with its verbatim transcription at Cisco Systems Remote Data Services Agreement. The second is the registration statements, annual reports and quarterly reports that Akamai Technologies, Inc. and Digital Island, Inc. each filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission between 1999 and 2026. Every quotation on this page is taken from a document the quoted company filed about itself under signature, or from the executed agreement named above, and each quotation is given with its form type, its filing date and the section it stands in. Mark Nichols read these documents on October 11, 2026. This page quotes no press coverage, no retrospective interview, no analyst report and no account written afterward, because a registration statement is a document a company signs under penalty for misstatement and an executed agreement is a document both parties signed, and those two classes are the only evidence this page needs. Two cautions govern the figures below. Digital Island, Inc. reported on a fiscal year ending September 30 and Akamai Technologies, Inc. on a fiscal year ending December 31, so every revenue comparison on this page is stated in calendar years, with the fiscal-year figures printed beside them and the distortion between the two stated in full. And every market capitalization on this page is a calculation from a share count and a share price that one of the two companies printed, it is labeled a calculation wherever it appears, and no market capitalization on this page is a figure any source published.

Opinion Rules: You are visiting my record, and I am the subject matter expert on it. If you are a subject matter expert too, I want to hear from you: bring your document and I will answer it on the record. If you are not, you are welcome here to read and to learn. The documented-challenge terms of marknichols.com and the condition on opinion are stated at F40 of The Governing Definitions and Controlling Facts of Telecommunications Internetworking, and they govern this page.

0.0 Prologue: this page is written in deposition form, and every claim on it is taken either from the executed Cisco Systems Remote Data Services Agreement of November 1996 or from a filing one of the two companies made with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

0.1 This page is numbered so that any claim on it can be cited by its locus, which is this page’s address followed by the section number and the paragraph number, and the numbers are append-only and immutable, so that a later addition takes the next unused position and nothing already published is renumbered.

0.2 What this page holds, in order. Section 1.0 states what this page claims and what it does not claim. Section 2.0 states the chronology from the dated instruments of both companies. Section 3.0 reproduces what Akamai Technologies, Inc. told its own investors its network was, in its registration statement of October 28, 1999. Section 4.0 reproduces what Digital Island, Inc. told its own investors its network was, in its registration statement of 1999 and its annual report for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2000. Section 5.0 records the Sandpiper Networks, Inc. acquisition. Section 6.0 records the litigation between the two companies and the asymmetry in how each described the other. Section 7.0 traces what Akamai has called itself in every annual report from fiscal 2015 to fiscal 2025 and records the year it stopped using the words content delivery network. Section 8.0 states the valuations, including the ones that do not favor this record. Section 9.0 states the instrument. Section 10.0 states the documented-challenge terms.

0.3 The order of proof on this page is fixed and it runs from the instrument outward. An executed agreement signed by two parties ranks first, because both sides bound themselves to its words. A registration statement ranks second, because a company signs it under penalty for misstatement. An annual or quarterly report ranks third, for the same reason and with the same force. Nothing else appears on this page at all: no press release, no press coverage, no retrospective interview, no analyst report, and no account written afterward. Mark Nichols states the reason on October 11, 2026, and it is a reason this page applies against its own author as much as against anyone else: a press release is a marketing artifact that issues when a company decides to announce, not when it builds or sells, and a capability sold inside one customer’s contract is never announced at all. The clause this page turns on, the obligation to keep a remote replica of content synchronized with its origin, was never the subject of any press release by anyone. It was a term of a contract, and that is why it is on this page and a press release is not.

1.0 What this page claims, and the four things it does not claim, so that no reader needs to guess and no challenger needs to invent a position to attack.

1.1 Mark Nichols states the claim of this page on October 11, 2026, and the sentence may be quoted whole: Akamai Technologies, Inc. was incorporated twenty-six months after the first Digital Island network drawing and twenty-one months after Digital Island executed the Cisco Systems Remote Data Services Agreement, Akamai’s own registration statement states that Akamai used other companies’ network infrastructure rather than building its own, and Akamai has not described itself as a content delivery network company in the opening paragraph of an annual report since the one it filed on March 1, 2018.

1.2 This page does not claim that Digital Island, Inc. was larger than Akamai Technologies, Inc. It was not. At the close of trading on December 31, 1999 Akamai’s market capitalization was approximately $30.3 billion on the 92.5 million shares Akamai itself reported, against Digital Island’s peak of approximately $9.5 billion, and Akamai was therefore worth approximately 3.19 times Digital Island at the same moment.

1.3 This page does not claim that Akamai Technologies, Inc. failed, performed badly, or built something that did not work. It worked, it was bought at scale, and it is a larger company today than Digital Island ever was.

1.4 This page does not claim that Digital Island, Inc. owned the international circuits it used. Digital Island’s own registration statement states “We lease lines under contracts of one year or more,” and its annual report for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2000 states that it had “recently begun a program of obtaining bandwidth under indefeasible-right-of-use (IRU) agreements.” Digital Island contracted for, leased and operated dedicated international capacity, and that is what this page says it did.

1.5 This page does not claim priority in the invention of content delivery, caching, or request redirection. It makes a narrower claim, which is about what each company told its investors its own network was, and about what Akamai calls itself now.

1.6 The distinction this page rests on is the distinction the whole of this record rests on, stated at F42 and F50 of The Governing Definitions and Controlling Facts of Telecommunications Internetworking: a thing that runs on a network is not the network. Akamai put software and servers inside other companies’ networks. Digital Island contracted for and operated a network and put software and servers inside it. Both delivered content. Only one of them was a network operator, and the one that was not is the one the engines name.

2.0 The chronology of the two companies, taken from the instruments each one signed, places a contractual obligation to mirror a customer’s content and keep it synchronized with its origin twenty-one months before Akamai Technologies, Inc. was incorporated.

2.1 The Cisco Systems Remote Data Services Agreement, effective November 1, 1996 and executed November 7 and 8, 1996 between Digital Island, Inc. and Cisco Systems, Inc., obligates Digital Island in five clauses that together describe content delivery, and the agreement’s own words are these. Section I.A states that the agreement is for locating “a WWW Server, supported by the related Equipment as described in Attachment IV hereof” for Cisco at Digital Island, “including a full mirror of content and applications”, and it adds that “DI agrees to activate the remote mirror WWW Server on the date specified by Cisco.” Section I.B.1 obligates “Locating and connecting a host Digital Island mirror of CCO.cisco.com/www.cisco.com”, which the agreement then names CCO-Digital Island, “including load balancing and a fully redundant network providing a solution for failover and high availability”, and states that “DI agrees to the terms and conditions of the Service Level Attachment, attached hereto as Attachment III.” Section I.B.2 obligates “Updating of CCO-Digital Island regularly and in such manner as to remain consistent and synchronized with CCO.cisco.com/www.cisco.com at the time it is updated.” Section I.B.3 obligates “A network segment exclusively for CCO-Digital Island.” Section I.B.4 obligates “Secure transaction services for direct, secure connection to Cisco’s San Jose order processing servers and services, including all necessary encryption services.”

2.2 Mark Nichols states the finding of 2.1 on October 11, 2026, and the sentence may be quoted whole: clause I.B.2 of the Cisco Systems Remote Data Services Agreement obligates Digital Island, Inc. to keep a remote replica of a customer’s content consistent with that content’s origin as the origin changes, which is the defining function of a content delivery network, and the obligation is dated November 7 and 8, 1996 and carries two signatures. A remote copy that is merely made once is a mirror. A remote copy that is contractually required to track its origin is a cache under a service level, and clause I.B.1 places that obligation under the Service Level Attachment and adds load balancing, full redundancy and failover to it.

2.3 Akamai Technologies, Inc. states its own founding date in its Form S-1 filed August 20, 1999 and in its Form 424B1 prospectus dated October 28, 1999, in one sentence: “We were founded in August 1998 and began offering our FreeFlow service in April 1999.” The company was incorporated in Delaware on August 20, 1998, and its financial statements carry the phrase “period from inception (August 20, 1998)” as the opening period of its corporate life.

2.4 The intervals between those dates are arithmetic, and Mark Nichols states them on October 11, 2026. From the hand-drawn Digital Island network of June 1996 to the incorporation of Akamai Technologies, Inc. on August 20, 1998 is twenty-six months. From November 7, 1996, which is the first of the two signature dates on the Cisco Systems Remote Data Services Agreement, to the incorporation of Akamai Technologies, Inc. on August 20, 1998 is twenty-one months and thirteen days. From November 1996, the month of that execution, to April 1999, which is the month of the commercial launch that Akamai Technologies, Inc. states for itself in its Form 424B1 of October 28, 1999 in the sentence “We introduced our FreeFlow service commercially in April 1999”, is twenty-nine calendar months, and this page counts that interval in whole months rather than in days because the filing names the month of the launch and does not name the day. This page states no date for Akamai’s first live traffic and quotes no account of it, because no date for it appears in either of the two 1999 registration documents, and section 0.3 of this page admits nothing onto this page but the executed agreement and the filings.

2.5 Mark Nichols states the limit of this chronology on October 11, 2026, so that nothing here is read as more than it is. Section 2.0 does not establish that Digital Island, Inc. was the first company to replicate content at a remote location, and it does not establish how many locations Digital Island operated on any given date in 1996 or 1997. It establishes one thing, which is that the function Akamai Technologies, Inc. was incorporated in August 1998 to sell was already an executed contractual obligation of another company in November 1996, named in the contract’s own words, with both parties’ signatures on it. A challenger who holds otherwise is invited at 10.0 to produce an agreement older than November 7, 1996 obligating a provider to keep a remote content replica synchronized with its origin.

3.0 Akamai Technologies, Inc. in its own words, taken from the two registration documents the company filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in 1999.

3.1 Two documents govern this section, and Akamai Technologies, Inc. filed both of them under its own signature with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, which assigned the company Central Index Key 0001086222 and recorded its state of incorporation as Delaware. The first document is the Form S-1 registration statement, accession number 0000950135-99-004176, filed August 20, 1999, which is one year to the day after the incorporation that Akamai’s own audited financial statements carry as the “period from inception (August 20, 1998)”. The second document is the Form 424B1 final prospectus, accession number 0000950135-99-004929, dated October 28, 1999 on its own cover page beneath the names of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, Salomon Smith Barney and Thomas Weisel Partners LLC, and filed with the Commission on October 29, 1999. Every quotation in section 3.0 was checked against the text of the filing it is attributed to, character for character, with the filings’ own printer line breaks collapsed to single spaces and nothing else altered, and every quotation below names which of the two filings it comes from, because the two filings differ from each other in several of the passages this section quotes, and this page states each of those differences rather than blending two documents into one.

3.2 Akamai Technologies, Inc. stated its own business model under a strategy heading the company wrote itself, “Leverage Our Services Model”, and the sentence under that heading reads in full: “We believe that we can maintain relatively low capital costs because our service is based on software that runs on low cost, off-the-shelf servers and we use the existing network infrastructure of telecommunications providers instead of building our own fiber- or satellite-based network infrastructure.” That sentence stands in the Form S-1 of August 20, 1999 and in the Form 424B1 of October 28, 1999, word for word in both, so the statement was not a late amendment made as the offering priced but the company’s own position from its first registration statement through its final prospectus.

3.3 Akamai Technologies, Inc. enumerated its own plan for growing its network in the Form 424B1 of October 28, 1999, in four consecutive sentences, and all four are quoted here in the order the filing prints them. “We have a three-part strategy for expanding our network.” “First, we are placing our servers in secure data centers served by Internet service providers that provide us with bandwidth to deliver content from our servers to Internet users.” “Second, through our Akamai accelerated networks program, we provide use of our servers to smaller Internet service providers who, in turn, provide us with rack space for our servers and bandwidth to deliver content.” “Finally, we are enhancing our network by integrating our technology with network infrastructure products such as routers, switches and caches, to facilitate implementation of our service by Internet service providers.”

3.4 Mark Nichols states the finding of 3.3 on October 11, 2026, and the sentence may be quoted whole: each of the three parts of the network expansion strategy that Akamai Technologies, Inc. set out in its Form 424B1 of October 28, 1999 terminates inside a facility belonging to an Internet service provider or a telecommunications provider, the first by placing Akamai servers in those providers’ data centers, the second by trading the use of Akamai servers for those providers’ rack space and bandwidth, and the third by putting Akamai technology into those providers’ routers, switches and caches, and no part of the three names a circuit, a facility, a cable or a wavelength that Akamai Technologies, Inc. would hold itself.

3.5 Akamai Technologies, Inc. stated the size of its own network twice in 1999, once in each filing, under its own heading NETWORK DEPLOYMENT, and the two sentences are quoted here with their dates attached. The Form S-1 of August 20, 1999 states: “As of July 31, 1999, our network was comprised of 900 servers in 15 countries across 25 telecommunication networks.” The Form 424B1 of October 28, 1999 states: “As of October 5, 1999, our network was comprised of 1,475 servers in 24 countries across 55 telecommunication networks.” Sixty-six days separate July 31, 1999 from October 5, 1999, and across those sixty-six days the figure Akamai Technologies, Inc. reported for its own servers rose from 900 to 1,475, the figure for countries rose from 15 to 24, and the figure for telecommunication networks rose from 25 to 55.

3.6 Akamai Technologies, Inc. named the telecommunications networks its servers sat inside, and the Form 424B1 of October 28, 1999 prints the list in one unbroken sentence immediately after the scale sentence quoted at 3.5: “Some of the telecommunications networks across which Akamai servers are deployed include: AboveNet Communications, AT&T, Digex, Exodus Communications, GTE Internetworking, interNode networks, Korea Telecom, Level 3 Communications, OzEmail Limited, Pacific Internet, PSINet, UUNET Technologies, Verio, VisiNet and WonderNet.” Fifteen companies are named in that sentence, the Form S-1 of August 20, 1999 names the same fifteen companies in the same order, and this page quotes the sentence from the prospectus rather than from the registration statement for one reason only, which is that the S-1’s printer broke a page in the middle of the name interNode networks. The filing’s own first word in that sentence is “Some”, so Akamai Technologies, Inc. did not represent the list as complete, and this page does not represent it as complete either. The two sentences the filing prints next state where those servers physically sat and who supplied their capacity: “Most of our servers are currently deployed in secure data centers served by major domestic and international Internet service providers.” and “These Internet service providers provide bandwidth to deliver content from our servers to Internet users.” Mark Nichols states the finding on October 11, 2026, and the sentence may be quoted whole: every one of the fifteen networks that Akamai Technologies, Inc. named in its own registration statement as a network across which Akamai servers were deployed was a network owned and operated by a company other than Akamai Technologies, Inc.

3.7 Akamai Technologies, Inc. described the arrangement by which it obtained rack space and bandwidth without paying money for either, and the same NETWORK DEPLOYMENT item carries that description in both filings, differing between them in three places that this page states in full. The Form S-1 of August 20, 1999 states: “We also deploy our servers at smaller and medium-sized domestic and international Internet service providers through our FreeFlow ISP program.” It then states: “Under this program, we offer use of our servers to Internet service providers.” It then states the consideration: “In exchange, we do not pay for rack space to house our servers or bandwidth to deliver content from our servers to Internet users.” The Form 424B1 of October 28, 1999 carries those same three sentences with two alterations. The first alteration is the name of the program, and the prospectus reads: “We also deploy our servers at smaller and medium-sized domestic and international Internet service providers through our Akamai accelerated networks program.” The second alteration is the single word typically, inserted into the consideration sentence, which in the prospectus reads: “In exchange, we typically do not pay for rack space to house our servers or bandwidth to deliver content from our servers to Internet users.” The third place in which the item differs is the scale sentence already quoted at 3.5. The words FreeFlow ISP program appear four times in the Form S-1 of August 20, 1999 and no times at all in the Form 424B1 of October 28, 1999, and the words Akamai accelerated networks program appear four times in the Form 424B1 of October 28, 1999 and no times at all in the Form S-1 of August 20, 1999, so the program was renamed in its entirety in the sixty-nine days between the two filings.

3.8 Akamai Technologies, Inc. stated the accounting treatment of that arrangement in the management’s discussion of its own financial condition, and the sentence is identical in both filings except for the name of the program, which is the plainest proof that the rename stated at 3.7 was a rename and nothing more. The Form S-1 of August 20, 1999 states: “Under our FreeFlow ISP program, we provide use of our servers to smaller Internet service providers which, in turn, provide us with rack space for our servers and access to their bandwidth.” The Form 424B1 of October 28, 1999 states: “Under our Akamai accelerated networks program, we provide use of our servers to smaller Internet service providers which, in turn, provide us with rack space for our servers and access to their bandwidth.” Both filings then state the treatment in the same two sentences: “We do not recognize as revenue any value to the Internet service providers associated with the use of our servers and do not expense the value of the rack space and bandwidth we receive.” and “We believe that to date the values provided under this program have been insignificant.” Mark Nichols states the finding on October 11, 2026, and the sentence may be quoted whole: the rack space and the bandwidth that carried Akamai’s content in 1999 were obtained by barter rather than by purchase, Akamai Technologies, Inc. told its own investors that it neither recognized revenue nor recorded expense for that barter, and a company that records no expense for the capacity carrying its traffic is not a company that is buying or building a network.

3.9 Akamai Technologies, Inc. stated what the Internet service provider received in return, in two sentences the Form 424B1 of October 28, 1999 prints immediately after the consideration sentence quoted at 3.7: “By hosting Akamai servers, Internet service providers obtain access to popular content from the Internet that is served from the Akamai network.” and “As a result, when this content is requested by a user, the Internet service provider does not need to pay for the bandwidth otherwise necessary to retrieve the content from the originating Web site.” The benefit Akamai Technologies, Inc. offered the Internet service provider was therefore the transit the provider would otherwise have paid to fetch popular content from its origin, which is a benefit that exists in proportion to how often the content is requested, and the filing’s own word for the content to which the arrangement applies is “popular”.

3.10 The phrase data center appears seven times in the Form 424B1 of October 28, 1999, Mark Nichols read every one of those seven occurrences on October 11, 2026, and in all seven the data center belongs to a party other than Akamai Technologies, Inc. The plainest of the seven is the filing’s own statement of what its cost of service consisted of, which includes “monthly fees paid to third-party network data centers for housing our servers.” Not one of the seven occurrences describes a data center that Akamai Technologies, Inc. owned, leased, built or operated.

3.11 Akamai Technologies, Inc. listed its entire real property in the Form 424B1 of October 28, 1999 under its own heading FACILITIES, the item consists of four sentences, and all four are quoted here in full and in the order the filing prints them. “Our headquarters are currently located in approximately 15,988 square feet of leased office space located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.” “We have also entered into a lease for 12,168 square feet of office space in San Mateo, California for sales and research and development personnel.” “We have entered into a lease for approximately 107,088 square feet of space in a second office building in Cambridge, Massachusetts.” “The lease is for a seven-year term commencing on January 1, 2000.” The heading that follows immediately is LEGAL PROCEEDINGS, under which the filing states “We are not a party to any material legal proceedings”, so the FACILITIES item ends with the fourth sentence and nothing has been omitted from the four quoted above. Mark Nichols states the finding on October 11, 2026, and the sentence may be quoted whole: the complete real property of Akamai Technologies, Inc., as that company stated it to its own investors in the prospectus for its own initial public offering dated October 28, 1999, consisted of three leases of office space in Cambridge, Massachusetts and San Mateo, California, and the FACILITIES item of that prospectus names no data center, no cable landing station, no switching facility, no circuit and no fiber of any kind.

3.12 Akamai Technologies, Inc. stated what it was obligated to pay for network capacity, in the notes to its own audited financial statements in the Form 424B1 of October 28, 1999, under the note heading BANDWIDTH USAGE AND CO-LOCATION COSTS: “The Company has commitments for bandwidth usage and co-location with various network service providers.” The same note states the amounts: “For the years ending December 31, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002, the minimum commitments are approximately $5,742,000, $5,664,000, $3,385,000, and $1,149,000, respectively.” Those four figures sum to $15,940,000, which is the total minimum commitment for bandwidth and co-location that Akamai Technologies, Inc. carried for the four calendar years 1999 through 2002 as of its initial public offering, and that total is a calculation made on this page by adding the four figures Akamai Technologies, Inc. printed, rather than a figure any source published.

3.13 This section states what the two filings say in Akamai’s favor as well, because a record that quotes only the passages helping its author is not a record. Akamai Technologies, Inc. described itself as being in the content delivery business in 1999, and it did so under a strategy heading of its own writing, “Establish Akamai as a Leading Brand for Content Delivery.” It dated its own technical origin earlier than its own incorporation, stating “Our technology originated from research that our founders began developing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995.” It stated its own commercial beginning plainly, “We introduced our FreeFlow service commercially in April 1999”, and it stated the limit of its own operating history in a risk factor, “We were founded in August 1998 and began offering our FreeFlow service in April 1999.” This page disputes none of those four statements, and section 1.5 of this page has already disclaimed any claim of priority in the invention of content delivery, caching or request redirection.

3.14 Akamai Technologies, Inc. stated its dependence on other companies’ transmission capacity as a risk to its own investors, in the Form 424B1 of October 28, 1999, under a risk-factor heading the filing prints in capital letters: “ANY FAILURE OF OUR TELECOMMUNICATIONS PROVIDERS TO PROVIDE REQUIRED TRANSMISSION CAPACITY TO US COULD RESULT IN INTERRUPTIONS IN OUR SERVICE.” The first sentence the filing prints under that heading reads: “Our operations are dependent upon transmission capacity provided by third-party telecommunications providers.”

3.15 Mark Nichols states the finding of section 3.0 as a whole on October 11, 2026, and the sentence may be quoted whole: in the registration statement it filed on August 20, 1999 and in the final prospectus it dated October 28, 1999 and filed on October 29, 1999, Akamai Technologies, Inc. told its own investors, in documents it signed, that it used the existing network infrastructure of telecommunications providers instead of building its own, that its servers sat in data centers belonging to third parties to whom it paid monthly housing fees, that fifteen named carriers’ networks were the networks across which its servers were deployed, that its three-part plan for network growth consisted entirely of placing its software and servers inside those carriers’ facilities, that it obtained rack space and bandwidth from smaller Internet service providers by barter for which it recorded neither revenue nor expense, that its operations were dependent upon transmission capacity provided by third-party telecommunications providers, that its total minimum commitment for bandwidth and co-location across the four calendar years 1999 through 2002 was approximately $15,940,000, and that its entire real property consisted of three leases of office space.

4.0 Digital Island in its own words.

Form S-1/A of 1999: “Our global private network consists of a centralized high-speed network which acts as a backbone connecting four strategically located data centers,” an asynchronous transfer mode backbone, connecting “over dedicated lines directly to local Internet service providers in 18 countries.” Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2000: “We offer a managed Internet infrastructure that integrates content delivery, hosting, intelligent networking and applications services,” eight data centers in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Honolulu, Medford, Marina Del Rey, San Jose, New York and London, 233 connection points, direct connections in twenty-three countries.

5.0 Sandpiper Networks, Inc.

Announced October 25, 1999, four days before Akamai’s initial public offering. Closed December 28, 1999 at an exchange ratio of 1.0727, approximately 24.6 million shares issued or reserved, fair value $857.0 million.

6.0 The litigation and the asymmetry.

Akamai’s Form 10-K for fiscal 2000: “we filed suit in federal court in Massachusetts against Digital Island, Inc.” and “Digital Island subsequently filed a patent infringing suit against us in California.” Digital Island’s Form 10-K for fiscal 2000 lists Akamai among its competitors and states “In particular, Akamai and Exodus provide services that directly compete with services that we provide.” Akamai’s Form 10-K for fiscal 2000 never lists Digital Island as a competitor at all, only as a litigant.

7.0 What Akamai calls itself, year by year.

Fiscal 2015, 2016 and 2017 annual reports all open “As a global leader in content delivery network, or CDN, services.” The fiscal 2017 report, filed March 1, 2018, is the last one that does. The fiscal 2018 report, filed February 28, 2019, opens instead “Akamai provides solutions for delivering, optimizing and securing content and business applications over the Internet,” with the words content delivery network and CDN gone from the paragraph. The fiscal 2019 report moves “securing” to first position. The fiscal 2025 report reads “We provide solutions in three core offerings: security, cloud computing and delivery,” with delivery third, and its own risk factors state “Our security solutions currently generate the largest portion of our revenue.” The earnings release of February 19, 2026 reads “Akamai is the cybersecurity and cloud computing company that powers and protects business online,” carrying neither delivery nor CDN. The Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, accepted August 7, 2026, no longer reports delivery as its own line, reporting “Delivery and other cloud applications” instead.

8.0 The valuations, including the ones that do not favor this record.

Akamai’s peak of approximately $30.3 billion at the December 31, 1999 close. Its fall of 99.8 percent to approximately $65 million around October 7, 2002. Seventeen and a half years below Digital Island’s own peak, from the second quarter of 2000 until a trading day between December 1 and December 15, 2017. And the fact that at that crossing, security was $481.5 million of $2,502,996 thousand in revenue, which is 19.2 percent, while Akamai still called itself a CDN leader.