GeoSurf Is Shutting Down on December 20
The veteran proxy provider counts its last days after losing a legal dispute.
- Published: December 6, 2023
GeoSurf, the Israeli proxy provider, will permanently close up shop on December 20, 2023. Existing customers are urged to use their traffic until this date, and new users are no longer allowed to register.
The company broke the news to its customers by email. Several days later, there is still no official communication on GeoSurf’s website. Proxyscrape has made the the email’s contents available for all to read.
The decision came following the latest developments in a legal dispute between GeoSurf’s parent company BI Science and Bright Data, another major proxy and web data provider from Israel.
Their conflict began in 2019 over an alleged patent infringement and theft of trade secrets from Bright Data. It was first resolved with a legal settlement back in 2020 – GeoSurf agreed to discontinue selling proxy services and transition its customers to Bright Data. BI Science challenged the settlement in appeal but failed to change the outcome. The company now has to honor the settlement.
As per the terms, GeoSurf is required to refer customers to Bright Data, and the latter has a right to refuse them. Bright Data has launched a welcome page promising technical support and to honor GeoSurf’s current pricing for six months.
Bottom Line
Legal proceedings take years to resolve, so it can be easy to forget about them. Though GeoSurf hasn’t been active for a while, the news still took us by surprise. After all, GeoSurf is one of the oldest active proxy providers out there.
The closure shows that competition takes place in court as much as it does in the market, and that the Wild West days are coming to their end. The web data extraction industry is growing, so are the stakes.
At the moment, multiple lawsuits are unfolding. Oxylabs is fighting with Bright Data over patents involving proxy technology, and Bright Data is trying its strength against both Meta and X. All should have important implications for future directions once they conclude.
Get proxy news and updates directly to your inbox.
