They purchased all of Ookla from Ziff Davis, which includes Ekahau and RootMetrics. They’re in this for the commercial side of it. Speedtest and Downdetector seem to be mostly "public relations" sites from what I can tell. Like to get the Ookla name out there and have a positive public image.
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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Downdetector is hot garbage anyway.
Thank you! It’s divination in my opinion.
Speed test is whatever. I’m always suspicious that they have deals with certain ISPs to make the numbers look better than they are. It would be easy to do, and then just roll out the true cliche about “not every website or server will or can max out your connection.” Etc.
In case anyone wants a new speed test.
I host my own of this which is nice for testing local connections as well
Thank you!!
it's built into Chrome. Just search speed test and it brings you to M-Lab.
Do people just make up numbers for what companies are worth? I don't see how either of these are worth much of anything.
They bought all of Ookla from Ziff Davis, which includes rootmetrics and ekahau (various mobile network analytics/performance optimization stuff). Downdetector and Speedtest are just the two Ookla products that most people know so they get the headlines.
Speedtest probably gets billions of visitors a month, thats a lot of IPs and browser data you can harvest and sell.
Yeah, this makes me immediately suspicious
A company is valued by what somebody is willing to pay for it.
So kind of, yes.
It's all about traffic.
Toss in some ads and while you lose some customers you start generating revenue.
Prepare for enshittification while Accenture tries to find an RoI.
It seems like they're mostly interested in Ookla's commercial mobile network services, Ekahau and RootMetrics.
This is most likely true, a billion times over
damn, both were kinda useful. doesn't seem $1B worth tho lol
just wait until it gets shitty.
Welp, that was nice while it lasted. Its gonna become a shithole now as they try to get double digit growth on the "investment"
What's the value here? Both these sites get traffic and now they gotta apply even more trackers in an attempt to sell data and turn a profit off the purchase? Make a downdetector account to see which sites are down? Install our app?
They purchased all of Ookla from Ziff Davis, which includes Ekahau and RootMetrics. They're in this for the commercial side of it. Speedtest and Downdetector seem to be mostly PR sites from what I can tell. Like to get the Ookla name out there so people know who they are.
Sounds about right.