United Internet AG is a global Internet services company headquartered in Montabaur, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The company is structured in two business areas, Access and Applications, and has a total of 13 brands and numerous subsidiaries. It is the parent company of three major email providers and with the brand 1&1 and its 2.91 million DSL customer contracts, it owns the leading ISP in Germany. United Internet's web hosting and cloud computing business is operated by the 1&1 Ionossubsidiary. Since 2003, it is listed on the TecDAX. The company is active in various countries, as of August 2018: Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Czech Republic and USA. United Internet operates its own Internet backbone with computer clusters at several Internet exchange points.
History
The history of the company dates back to 1 & 1 EDV-Marketing GmbH, which was founded in 1988 as a service provider for computer-based marketing and advertising. In the 1990s, the company grew into a large company, which offered not only web hosting packages but also its own online service. Starting in 2000, United Internet initiated the acquisition of the internet provider Schlund+Partner. In July 2008, United Internet AG acquired a 30% stake in Jimdo GmbH. Jimdo's website builder became the core of 1&1's MyWebsite product ". Jimdo bought back its shares in 2009. United Internet AG's subsidiary 1&1 Internet AG acquired the DSL business from Freenet AG for EUR 123 million in May 2009. In 2013, through its subsidiary United Internet Ventures the company acquired a 25% share in Open-Xchange. In February 2014 United Internet announced the acquisition of a 25% stake in e-commerce software companyePages. ePages announced on the same day that the company would provide a new global e-commerce platform for customers of United Internet's 1&1 brand. In September 2014, United Internet announced it had agreed to acquire a 74.9 percent stake in Versatel from KKR for a fee of around €586 million.
Subsidiaries
United Internet is the parent company of 3 major webmail providers: GMX Mail and Web.de, which are predominantly European providers, and Mail.com whose users are mainly from the US and the UK. It also owns 1&1 Ionos, a domain registrar and web hosting provider. Furthermore it owns 1&1 Drilisch which is running the DSL and mobile network business in Germany. 1&1 Versatel is running the B2B access business and owns a 47,000 kilometer optical fiber network.
