What changed in this filing

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Item 1. Business

2021-03-01 compared with 2020-03-02 · 153 added, 135 removed, 101 unchanged (74% of the section changed)

J2 Global, Inc., together with its subsidiaries (“J2 Global”, “our”, “us” or “we”), is a leading provider of internet services.

Through our Cloud Services business, we provide cloud-based subscription services to consumers and businesses and license our intellectual property (“IP”) to third parties.

In addition, the Cloud Services business includes fax, security, privacy, data backup, email marketing and voice products.

Our Digital Media business specializes in the technology, gaming, broadband, business to business, healthcare, and international markets, offering content, tools and services to consumers and businesses.

We were incorporated in 2014 as a Delaware corporation through the creation of a new holding company structure, and our Cloud Services business, operated by our wholly owned subsidiary, J2 Cloud Services, LLC (formerly J2 Cloud Services, Inc.), and its subsidiaries, was founded in 1995.

Our Cloud Services business generates revenues primarily from customer subscription and usage fees and from IP licensing fees.

J2 Global, Inc., together with its subsidiaries (“J2 Global”, “our”, “us” or “we”), is a leading provider of internet information and services.

Our Digital Media business specializes in the technology, shopping, gaming, and healthcare markets, offering content, tools and services to consumers and businesses.

Our Cloud Services business provides cloud-based subscription services to consumers and businesses including cloud fax, cybersecurity, privacy and marketing technology.

Our Digital Media business generates revenues from advertising and sponsorships, subscription and usage fees, performance marketing and licensing fees.

Our Cloud Services business generates revenues primarily from customer subscription and usage fees.

In addition to growing our business organically, on a regular basis we acquire businesses to grow our customer bases, expand and diversify our service offerings, enhance our technologies, acquire skilled personnel and enter into new markets.

Our consolidated revenues are currently generated from three basic business models, each with different financial profiles and variability.

Our Cloud Services business is driven primarily by subscription revenues that are relatively higher margin, stable and predictable from quarter to quarter with some seasonal weakness in the fourth quarter.

The Cloud Services business also includes the results of our IP licensing business, which can vary dramatically in both revenues and profitability from period to period.

Our Digital Media business is driven primarily by advertising revenues, has relatively higher sales and marketing expense and has seasonal strength in the fourth quarter.

Our Cloud Services business is driven primarily by subscription revenues that are relatively higher margin, stable and predictable from quarter to quarter with some minor seasonal weakness in the fourth quarter.

We continue to pursue additional acquisitions, which may include companies operating under business models that differ from those we operate under today.

Such acquisitions could impact our consolidated profit margins and the variability of our revenues.

Cloud Services

Consumers and businesses of all sizes are increasingly subscribing to cloud-based services to meet their communication, messaging, security, privacy, data backup, hosting, customer marketing and other needs.

Cloud-based services represent a model for delivering and consuming, independent of location, real time business technology services, resources and solutions over the internet.

Their goal is to reduce or eliminate costs, increase sales and enhance productivity, mobility, business continuity and security.

Our eFax®, MyFax® and sFax® online fax services enable users to securely send and receive faxes via the internet and email.

Our Vipre security solutions protect our customers from cyber threats with endpoint and email security and threat intelligence.

IPVanish and encrypt.me provide virtual private networks that encrypt our customers’ data and activity on the internet.

KeepItSafe®, LiveVault®, OffsiteDataSync and Livedrive® enable our customers to securely back up their data and dispose of tape or other physical systems.

Campaigner®, iContact and SMTP provide our customers enhanced email marketing and delivery solutions.

eVoice®, Onebox® and Line2 provide our customers a virtual phone system with various available enhancements.

All of these services represent software-as-a-service solutions except online backup which represents both a software-as-a-service solution and an infrastructure-as-a-service solution.

We believe these services represent more efficient and less expensive solutions than many existing alternatives, and provide increased security, privacy, flexibility and mobility.

We generate substantially all of our Cloud Services revenues from “fixed” subscription revenues for basic customer subscriptions and, to a lesser extent, “variable” usage revenues generated from actual usage by our subscribers.

Our online fax, virtual phone, email, customer marketing and online backup products have both a fixed and variable subscription component with the substantial majority of revenues derived from the fixed portion.

In addition, the cost structures of all our Cloud Services are very similar in terms of fixed and variable components and include capital expenditures that are in proportion to revenue for each product offering.

We also generate Cloud Services revenues from patent licensing.

We market our Cloud Services offerings to a broad spectrum of prospective business customers including sole proprietors, small to medium-sized businesses, enterprises and government organizations.

We also market our Cloud Services offerings to consumers.

Our marketing efforts include enhancing brand awareness;

utilizing online advertising, search engines and affiliate programs;

and selling through both a telesales and direct sales force.

We continuously seek to extend the number of distribution channels through which we acquire paying customers and improve the cost and volume of customers obtained through our current channels.

We offer the following cloud services and solutions:

eFax® is a leading brand in the global online fax market.

Various tiers of service provide increasing levels of features and functionality to sole proprietors, small and medium-sized businesses, and enterprises around the world.

Our most popular services allow individuals to receive and send faxes as email attachments.

In addition to eFax® , we offer online fax services under a variety of alternative brands including sFax®, MyFax® , eFax Plus ®, eFax Pro™, eFax Secure™, eFax Corporate™ and eFax Developer™ .

VIPRE™ software solutions protect people and businesses from costly and malicious cyber threats.

VIPRE offerings include comprehensive endpoint and email security, along with threat intelligence for real-time malware analysis.

Excel Micro™ is a Cloud Security distributor focusing on providing email security, web security, and endpoint protection.

Their solutions are offered to thousands of resellers in the United States who provide the product to their end customers.

IPVanish offers one of the fastest virtual private network services in the industry.

The IPVanish network spans 1,300+ servers across more than 75 locations around the world, enabling users to browse the internet securely and anonymously, without restriction.

Encrypt.me is an easy-to-use virtual private network (“VPN”) service that protects individuals, families and teams.

Encrypt.me has a global server infrastructure and offers the option of self-hosted cloud VPN servers which users can set up in their homes, offices or remote data centers.

KeepItSafe® provides fully managed and monitored online backup and disaster recovery solutions for businesses, using its ISO-certified platform.

KeepItSafe solutions for business continuity, backup and recovery fully protect the customer’s physical, virtual and cloud resources.

LiveDrive® provides online backup and sync storage features for professionals and individuals.

The customers can access their files from anywhere at any time so long as they have access to the internet.

LiveVault ® provides cloud backup and recovery services.

LiveVault ® services include, among other items, offsite protection of data combined with local backup, web based access to protected data and a mirrored data center to ensure recoverability.

OffsiteDataSync is a Platinum Veeam Service Provider with the Veeam Accredited Service Partner (“VASP”) designation, providing managed end-to-end solutions to secure physical, virtual, hybrid, and cloud-to-cloud environments.

SugarSync® provides online file backup, synchronization and sharing of all of a customer’s documents, photos, music and movies across all of the customer’s computers and mobile devices.

Email Marketing

Campaigner® and iContact provide email marketing solutions to help small, medium and large businesses strengthen customer relationships and drive sales.

Campaigner and iContact offer professional email campaign creation, advanced list management and segmentation tools, marketing automation, attribution reports and campaign tracking, and targeted email autoresponders and workflows.

SMTP is our cloud-based solution for email delivery that enables our customers to begin using an email relay service.

Using our SMTP platform, customers control all aspects of their email distribution and can review email campaign statistics through a dashboard.

We have a team of experts that help our customers’ setup and optimize the SMTP relay.

eVoice® is a virtual phone system that provides small and medium-sized businesses on-demand voice communications services.

Customers can assign departmental and individual extensions that can connect to multiple numbers, including land-line and mobile phones and IP networks, and can enhance reachability through “find me/follow me” capabilities.

These services also include advanced integrated voicemail for each extension.

Line2 is a cloud phone service which allows users to add a 2nd line to a mobile device.

Line2 enables users to separate work and personal calls on a single device and includes standard business phone service features such as SMS, MMS, auto attendant, call routing, call forwarding, voicemail, call queue, toll-free and vanity numbers.

Onebox® is a full-featured unified communications suite.

It combines the features of many of our other branded services, plus added functionality, to provide a full virtual office.

Onebox® includes a virtual phone system, hosted email, online fax, audio conferencing and web conferencing.

We hold a number of issued U.S.

and foreign patents and other intellectual property rights.

We seek to license some of these intellectual property rights to third parties in exchange for fees.

We include the results of these activities within the Cloud Services business, exclusive of brand licensing by the Digital Media business.

Global Network and Operations

Our Cloud Services business operates multiple physical Points of Presence (“POPs”) worldwide, a central data center in Los Angeles and a remote disaster recovery facility.

We connect our POPs to our central data centers via redundant, and often times diverse, Virtual Private Networks (“VPNs”) using the internet.

Our network is designed to deliver value-added user applications, customer support and billing services for our customers anywhere in the world and a local presence for customers from thousands of cities in 50 countries on six continents.

We offer our services in all major metropolitan areas in the United States (“U.S.”), the United Kingdom (“U.K.”), Canada and such major cities as Berlin, Copenhagen, Madrid, Manila, Mexico City, Milan, Paris, Rome, Singapore, Sydney, Taipei, Tokyo, Vienna and Zurich.

Our customers are located throughout the world.

Customer Support Services

Our Cloud Services customer service organizations support our customers through a combination of online self-help, email communications, interactive chat sessions and telephone calls.

Our internet-based online self-help tools enable customers to resolve simple issues on their own, eliminating the need to speak or write to our customer service representatives.

We use internal personnel and contracted third parties (on a dedicated personnel basis) to answer our customer emails and telephone calls and to participate in interactive chat sessions.

Live sales and customer support services are available in various languages, including English, Spanish, Dutch, German, French, Japanese and Cantonese.

Our Cloud Services business faces competition from, among others, online fax-providers, traditional fax machine or multi-function printer companies, unified messaging/communications providers, telephone companies, voicemail providers, companies offering PBX systems and outsourced PBX solutions, email marketing solution providers, various data backup and hosting providers, cyber security software and service vendors, and virtual private networks.

Historically, our most popular solutions have related to online faxing, including the ability of our customers to access faxes via email and our outbound desktop faxing capabilities.

These solutions compete primarily against traditional fax machine manufacturers, which are generally large and well-established companies, as well as publicly traded and privately-held providers of fax servers and related software and outsourced fax services.

Some of these companies may have greater financial and other resources than we do.

We believe that the primary competitive factors determining our success in the market for our Cloud Services include financial strength and stability;

reputation for reliability and security of service;

intellectual property ownership;

effectiveness of customer support;

sign-up, service and software ease-of-use;

service scalability;

customer messaging and branding;

geographic coverage;

scope of services;

currency and payment method acceptance;

and local language sales, messaging and support.

For more information regarding the competition that we face, please refer to the section entitled Risk Factors contained in Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

J2 Global was incorporated in 2014 as a Delaware corporation through the creation of a holding company structure, and our Cloud Services business, operated by our wholly owned subsidiary, J2 Cloud Services, LLC (formerly J2 Cloud Services, Inc.), and its subsidiaries, was founded in 1995.

Digital Media

Our Digital Media business operates a portfolio of web properties and apps which includes IGN, Mashable, PC Mag, Humble Bundle, Speedtest, Offers, Black Friday, AskMen, MedPageToday, Everyday Health, What to Expect, among others.

Our Digital Media business operates a portfolio of web properties and apps which includes IGN, RetailMeNot, Mashable, PCMag, Humble Bundle, Speedtest, Offers, Black Friday, MedPageToday, Everyday Health, BabyCenter and What to Expect, among others.

During 2020, our Digital Media web properties attracted approximately 9.1 billion visits and 31.5 billion page views.

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online deals and discounts for consumers;

interactive tools and mobile applications that enable consumers to manage a broad array of health and wellness needs on a daily basis, including medical conditions, pregnancy, diet and fitness news;

and tools and information for healthcare professionals to stay abreast of industry, legislative and regulatory developments in major medical specialties.

news, interactive tools and mobile applications that enable consumers to manage a broad array of health and wellness needs on a daily basis, including medical conditions, pregnancy, diet and fitness;

and news, tools and information for healthcare professionals to stay abreast of industry, legislative and regulatory developments across major medical specialties.

Our Digital Media business generates revenues from the sale of display and video advertising;

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business-to-business leads to IT vendors;

the licensing of technology, data and other intellectual material to clients;

the licensing of technology, data and other intellectual property to clients;

and the sale of subscription services to consumers and businesses.

We believe competitive factors relating to attracting and retaining users include the ability to provide premium and exclusive content and the reach, effectiveness, and efficiency of our marketing services to attract consumers, advertisers, healthcare professionals and publishers.

We continue to seek opportunities to acquire additional web properties, both within and outside of the technology, gaming, lifestyle, and healthcare verticals, with the goal of monetizing their audiences and content though application of our proprietary technologies and insight.

We continue to seek opportunities to acquire additional web properties, both within and outside of the technology, gaming, lifestyle, and healthcare verticals, with the goal of monetizing their audiences and content through application of our proprietary technologies and insight.

Web Properties

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Mashable is recognized as a trusted global brand and produces stories for more than a dozen platforms, including Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook.

Offers.com is a coupons & deals website featuring offers from more than 16,000 of the internet’s more popular stores and brands.

Offers.com’s objective is to help consumers find the best deals on the web.

Additionally, Offers.com employs a process to verify that its coupon codes work, saving consumers time and money.

BlackFriday.com, TheBlackFriday.com, BestBlackFriday.com and DealsofAmerica.com are resources for shoppers to find the best deals and offers from retailers during the height of the holiday shopping season.

Ookla provides customers fixed broadband and mobile network testing applications, data and analysis.

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Ekahau provides solutions for enterprise wireless network design and troubleshooting.

More than 15,000 customers run their networks with Ekahau’s Wi-Fi planning and measurement solutions, which design and manage superior wireless networks by minimizing network deployment time and ensuring sufficient wireless coverage across the network.

Downdetector offers real-time overviews of status information and outages for services and digital products that consumers use everyday.

Downdetector aims to track any service that its users consider vital to their everyday lives, including (but not limited to) internet providers, mobile providers, airlines, public transport and other online services.

Ziff Davis B2B provides digital content for buyers of information technology (IT) products and services, allowing IT vendors to identify, reach and influence corporate IT decision makers who are actively researching specific IT purchases.

More than 15,000 customers run their networks with Ekahau’s Wi-Fi planning and measurement solutions, which design and manage superior wireless networks by seeking to minimize network deployment time and establish sufficient wireless coverage across the network.

Downdetector offers real-time overviews of status information and outages for services and digital products that consumers use every day.

Downdetector aims to track any service that its users consider vital to their everyday lives, including (but not limited to) internet providers, mobile providers, airlines, banks, public transport and other online services.

Spiceworks Ziff Davis B2B provides digital content for buyers of information technology (IT) products and services, allowing IT vendors to identify, reach and influence corporate IT decision makers who are actively researching specific IT purchases.

RetailMeNot is a savings destination that influences consumer purchase decisions through savings and discount opportunities by connecting retail partners representing more than 70,000 national and international brands with consumer shopping audiences.

RetailMeNot promotional media solutions include mobile coupons and codes, cash back offers and browser extensions.

Offers.com is a coupons & deals website featuring offers from more than 16,000 of the internet’s more popular stores and brands.

Offers.com’s objective is to help consumers find the best deals on the web.

Additionally, Offers.com employs a process to verify that its coupon codes work, saving consumers time and money.

I GN Entertainment is an internet media brand focused on the video game and entertainment enthusiast markets.

IGN reaches more than 235 million monthly users and is followed by more than 16 million subscribers on YouTube and 40 million users on social platforms.

IGN reaches more than 254 million monthly users across 28 platforms and is followed by more than 47 million social and YouTube followers with 500 million minutes watched monthly.

HumbleBundle.com is a digital subscription and storefront for video games, ebooks, and software.

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Everyday Health Consumer

Consumer-focused properties include online content, interactive tools and applications designed to allow consumers to manage a broad array of health and wellness needs on a daily basis.

Everyday Health , our flagship brand, is a broad-based health information portal that provides consumers with trusted and actionable health information intended to empower users to better manage their health and wellness.

We operate the Mayo Clinic Diet digital program, a subscription-based plan for weight loss, and ultimately better health, developed by the weight loss experts at Mayo Clinic.

Consumer-focused properties include online content, news, interactive tools and applications designed to allow consumers to manage a broad array of health and wellness needs on a daily basis.

Everyday Health , our flagship brand, is a broad-based health information portal that provides consumers with trusted and actionable health and wellness information intended to empower users to better manage their health and wellness.

The Mayo Clinic Diet is a digital program, a subscription-based plan for weight loss, and ultimately better health, developed by the weight loss experts at Mayo Clinic.

Based on the bestselling book by the same name, the Mayo Clinic Diet digital program provides a step-by-step program to jump-start quick weight loss, achieve a goal weight and maintain it for life.

We own and operate Castle Connolly Medical Ltd.

, a premier brand in healthcare research and physician ratings and publisher of the renowned Top Doctor series, including America’s Top Doctors .

Everyday Health Pregnancy & Parenting

We own and operate the BabyCenter brand, the leading global digital pregnancy and parenting resource.

BabyCenter operates 10 international versions in nine different languages along with multiple international app editions delivered via websites, mobile apps and online communities.

BabyCenter is the leading global digital pregnancy and parenting resource.

BabyCenter operates 10 international versions in nine different languages delivered via websites, mobile apps and online communities.

We also operate the digital properties for the What to Expect brand, a leading pregnancy and parenting media resource.

Based on the best-selling pregnancy book, What to Expect When You’re Expecting , by author Heidi Murkoff, the What to Expect website and mobile applications contain content on conception planning and pregnancy, as well as information on newborns and toddlers.

Everyday Health Professional Properties

Based on the best-selling pregnancy book, What to Expect When You’re Expecting , by author Heidi Murkoff, the What to Expect website and mobile applications contain interactive content on conception planning and pregnancy, as well as information on raising newborns and toddlers.

Everyday Health Professional

For healthcare professionals, we provide digital content that enables healthcare professionals to stay abreast of clinical, industry, legislative and regulatory developments across all major medical specialties.

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PRIME is nationally recognized for its healthcare outcomes research and its conduct of research-informed and other CME and CE programs in various therapeutic areas.

For two of the last four years, PRIME has been honored by the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions as winner of the William Campbell Felch Award for Outstanding Research in Continuing Education (“CE”).

Subscriptions

We offer subscriptions to businesses for Speedtest Intelligence, which offers up-to-date insights into global fixed broadband and mobile performance data.

We offer subscriptions to consumers for our Mayo Clinic Diet program, PCMag Digital Edition and Humble Bundle.

Display and Video Advertising

We sell online display and video advertising on our owned-and-operated web properties and on third party sites as well as targeted advertising across the internet through various unaffiliated third party digital advertising networks.

We sell online display and video advertising on our owned-and-operated web properties and on third party sites.

We have contractual arrangements with advertisers either directly or through agencies.

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For instance, we will license the right to use PCMag’s “Editors’ Choice” logo and other copyrighted editorial content to businesses whose products have earned such distinction.

Subscriptions

We offer subscriptions to businesses for Speedtest Intelligence, which offers up-to-date insights into global fixed broadband and mobile performance data.

We offer subscriptions to consumers for our Mayo Clinic Diet program, PCMag Digital Edition and Humble Bundle.

Competition in the digital media space is fierce and continues to intensify.

Our digital media business competes with online publishers including CNET, GameSpot, WebMD, Healthline, Medscape, Vox and others as well as with portals, advertising networks, social media sites and other platforms, including Google, Facebook, Twitch and others.

We believe that the primary competitive factors determining our success in the market for our digital media include the reputation of brands as trusted sources of objective information and our ability to attract internet users and advertisers to our web properties.

Our digital media business competes with diversified internet and digital media companies like IAC/InterActiveCorp, Red Ventures, Internet Brands and others as well as with other sellers of advertising including Google, Facebook, and others.

For more information regarding the competition that we face, please refer to the section entitled Risk Factors contained in Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Cloud Services

Consumers and businesses of all sizes are increasingly subscribing to cloud-based services to meet their communication, messaging, security, privacy, customer marketing and other needs.

Cloud-based services represent a model for delivering and consuming, independent of location, real time business technology services, resources and solutions over the internet.

Their goal is to reduce or eliminate costs, increase sales and enhance productivity, mobility, business continuity and security.

Our eFax®, MyFax® and sFax® fax services enable users to securely send and receive faxes via the internet and email.

Our Vipre security and Inspired eLearning cybersecurity solutions protect our customers from cyber threats with endpoint and email security, threat intelligence and security awareness training.

IPVanish and Encrypt.me provide virtual private networks that encrypt our customers’ data and activity on the internet.

Livedrive® enables our customers to securely back up their data and dispose of tape or other physical systems.

Campaigner®, iContact, and SMTP provide our customers enhanced email marketing and delivery solutions.

eVoice® and Line2 provide our customers a virtual phone system with various available enhancements.

We believe these services represent more efficient and less expensive solutions than many existing alternatives, and provide increased security, privacy, flexibility and mobility.

We market our Cloud Services offerings to a broad spectrum of prospective business customers including sole proprietors, small to medium-sized businesses, enterprises and government organizations.

We also market our Cloud Services offerings to consumers.

Our marketing efforts include enhancing brand awareness;

utilizing online advertising, search engines and affiliate programs;

selling through both a telesales and direct sales force;

and working with resellers and other channel partners.

We continuously seek to extend the number of distribution channels through which we acquire paying customers and improve the cost and volume of customers obtained through our current channels.

We offer the following cloud services and solutions:

eFax® is a leading brand in the global cloud fax market.

Various tiers of service provide increasing levels of features and functionality to sole proprietors, small and medium-sized businesses, and enterprises around the world.

Our most popular services allow individuals to receive and send faxes as email attachments.

In addition to eFax® , we offer cloud fax services under a variety of alternative brands including sFax®, SRFax, MyFax® , and eFax Corporate™ .

Cybersecurity

VIPRE™ software solutions protect people and businesses from costly and malicious cyber threats.

VIPRE offerings include comprehensive endpoint and email security, along with threat intelligence for real-time malware analysis.

Inspired eLearning’s SaaS platform for cybersecurity awareness and compliance training helps enterprises protect their organizations by reducing human-related cybersecurity and workplace incidents.

IPVanish offers one of the fastest virtual private network services in the industry.

The IPVanish network spans 1,300+ servers across more than 75 locations around the world, enabling users to browse the internet securely and anonymously, without restriction.

SugarSync® provides online file backup, synchronization and sharing of all of a customer’s documents, photos, music and movies across all of the customer’s computers and mobile devices.

Encrypt.me is an easy-to-use virtual private network (“VPN”) service that protects individuals, families and teams.

Encrypt.me has a global server infrastructure and offers the option of self-hosted cloud VPN servers which users can set up in their homes, offices or remote data centers.

LiveDrive® provides online backup and sync storage features for professionals and individuals.

The customers can access their files from anywhere at any time so long as they have access to the internet.

SMB Enablement Services

Campaigner® and iContact provide email marketing solutions to help small, medium and large businesses strengthen customer relationships and drive sales.

eVoice® is a virtual phone system that provides small and medium-sized businesses on-demand voice communications services.

These services also include advanced integrated voicemail for each extension.

Line2 is a cloud phone service which allows users to add a 2nd line to a mobile device.

Our Cloud Services business faces competition from, among others, cloud fax-providers, traditional fax machine or multi-function printer companies, unified messaging/communications providers, healthcare inoperability solutions, email marketing solution providers, cyber security software and service vendors, and virtual private networks.

Our online fax and cybersecurity solutions compete against traditional fax machine manufacturers, which are generally large and well-established companies, as well as publicly traded and privately-held providers of online fax services, cybersecurity solutions and related software, such as OpenText and Mimecast.

Our Cloud Services business also competes against diversified and acquisitive vertical market software providers like Constellation Software.

Some of these companies may have greater financial and other resources than we do.

We believe that the primary competitive factors determining our success in the market for our Cloud Services include financial strength and stability;

reputation for reliability and security of service;

intellectual property ownership;

effectiveness of customer support;

sign-up, service and software ease-of-use;

service scalability;

customer messaging and branding;

geographic coverage;

scope of services;

currency and payment method acceptance;

and local language sales, messaging and support.

For more information regarding the competition that we face, please refer to the section entitled Risk Factors contained in Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Patents and Proprietary Rights

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and foreign patents.

We generate licensing revenues from some of these patents.

We are currently engaged in litigation to enforce several of our patents.

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We have obtained patent licenses for certain technologies where such licenses are necessary or advantageous.

We own and use a number of trademarks in connection with our services, including word and/or logo trademarks for eFax, MyFax, eFax Corporate, Sfax, eVoice, KeepItSafe, Onebox, PCMag, IGN, Everyday Health, AskMen, Humble Bundle, Mashable, Health eCareers, Ookla, Speedtest, and Geek.com, among others.

We own and use a number of trademarks in connection with our services, including word and/or logo trademarks for IGN, Everyday Health, BabyCenter, Humble Bundle, PCMag, eFax, Mashable, Ookla, Speedtest, and RetailMeNot, among others.

Many of these trademarks are registered worldwide, and numerous trademark applications are pending around the world.

We hold numerous internet domain names, including “efax.com”, “efaxcorporate.com”, “myfax.com”, “fax.com”, “evoice.com”, “keepitsafe.com”, “campaigner.com”, “onebox.com”, “pcmag.com”, “techbargains.com”, “ign.com”, “askmen.com”, “speedtest.net”, “offers.com”, “humblebundle.com”, “mashable.com”, “healthecareers.com”, and “geek.com”, among others.

We hold numerous internet domain names, including “everydayhealth.com”, “retailmenot.com”, “efax.com”, “pcmag.com”, “ign.com”, “speedtest.net”, “offers.com”, “humblebundle.com”, “mashable.com”, and “babycenter.com”, among others.

We have filed to protect our rights to our brands in certain alternative top-level domains such as “.org”, “.net”, “.biz”, “.info” and “.us”, among others.

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For information about the risks we face with respect to governmental regulation, please see Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K entitled Risk Factors.

Revenues associated with our Digital Media operations are subject to seasonal fluctuations, becoming most active during the fourth quarter holiday period due to increased retail activity.

Our Cloud Services revenues are impacted by the number of effective business days in a given period.

We traditionally experience lower than average Cloud Services usage and customer sign-ups in the fourth quarter.

Revenues associated with our Digital Media operations are subject to seasonal fluctuations, becoming most active during the fourth quarter holiday period due to increased retail activity.

Research and Development

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For more information regarding the technological risks that we face, please refer to the section entitled Risk Factors contained in Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

As of December 31, 2019 , we had approximately 3,090 employees, the majority of whom are in the U.S.

Our future success will depend, in part, on our ability to continue to attract, retain and motivate highly qualified technical, marketing and management personnel.

Human Capital Resources

As of December 31, 2020, we had approximately 4,700 employees, evenly split between U.S.

and non-U.S based employees.

Our ability to continue to attract, retain and motivate our highly qualified workforce is very important to our continued success.

Approximately 70 of the editorial employees in our Digital Media business have elected to join a union.

We chose to voluntarily recognize the union and have commenced negotiations on a collective bargaining agreement.

None of our other employees are represented by any collective bargaining unit or agreement.

We have never experienced a work stoppage.

We believe our relationship with our employees is good.

Web Availability of Reports

None of our other employees are represented by collective bargaining.

Acquisition Strategy Impact on Human Capital

J2 Global has made more than 189 acquisitions since its inception, including nine during 2020.

Welcoming and integrating new groups of employees - each group with its own unique culture, organizational norms, and expectations - is a strength of ours.

We have developed processes to reduce the human capital risk associated with our acquisition strategy, and we believe that our ability to effectively integrate new employees and businesses is a core competency for J2 Global.

Culture at J2 Global operates on two levels.

While we have a strong enterprise-wide culture that focuses on our core values – leadership, collaboration, efficiency, innovation, and purpose – we also have a strong network of micro-cultures that operate within many of our businesses and drive their success.

Integrating those micro-cultures and values is important;

we work hard to foster an environment of collaboration and embrace the power of small groups working together.

An important dimension of the enterprise culture at J2 Global stems from our belief that profitability and corporate responsibility go hand in hand.

We believe that “Doing is Greater than Talking,” which has been a rallying cry to employees, galvanizing them to take action to create social value and impact.

With their work and many contributions, our employees play a crucial role in supporting J2 Global’s “Five Pillars of Purpose,” which today include:

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion - Reinforce our diverse workforce, reflect our diverse audiences, and extend upon our inclusive culture.

Data - Protect our data and customer data, ensure our product security, and respect the data privacy rights of our users.

Environmental Sustainability - Reduce our environmental footprint and continue helping customers and users reduce their footprint.

Community - Support our employees worldwide and positively impact the communities around us.

Governance - Represent shareholders’ best interests with our rigorous and transparent corporate governance structure.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Our digital media audiences and cloud services users are diverse – gender, race, ethnicity, age, orientation, geography, education, background, interests, and more.

We believe that for our business to succeed over the long term, J2 Global must have an inclusive corporate culture that embraces diversity and promotes equity across our enterprise.

We are taking steps to promote that culture.

To date, we have:

• created J2 Diversity Council, a diverse group of employees that develops recommendations for recruiting, mentorship, and advancement;

• supported five Employee Resource Groups to increase opportunities for networking, learning, and development, with more groups to come;

• promoted training and education through our Racism in America speaker series and through expanded mandatory training that includes Managing Bias and Diversity & Inclusion;

• introduced DEI targets into our executive compensation program beginning in 2021.

We believe that transparency and accountability are important parts of managing human capital risk.

To that end, in 2020 we published our inaugural Annual Diversity Report, available on our website, which details our workforce race representation, gender representation, and details how those differ between our overall workforce and our senior employees, as well as introducing commitments to DEI initiatives within our current and future workforce.

We are proud of our progress to date – and we recognize we have much more to do.

We reinforce our culture and our values by seeking out diverse candidates, and looking for candidates that fit well with our organizational priorities.

We have had success in this area;

38 percent of all recent new hires have been people of color, and 44 percent of recent new hires have been women.

We are working to proactively attract more diverse talent;

we have doubled our referral bonus paid to employees when we hire a person of color they recommend, and we are partnering with Jopwell and the Professional Diversity Network to advertise our open roles to employees aligning with a multitude of identity groups.

Employee Compensation & Benefits

Compensation is an important consideration for all of our employees and we strive to pay competitive compensation packages that reflect the success of the business and the individual contributions of each colleague.

We are committed to fair pay practices;

roles are periodically benchmarked to help inform where adjustments may be needed.

We care for our employees by providing benefits we believe are effective at attracting and retaining the talent critical for our success and, more importantly, assist in their day to day well-being.

Those benefits include comprehensive health insurance coverage and covering 83% of health insurance premiums for covered U.S.

employees, an employee stock purchase program, flexible time off, free access to telemedicine, up to 16 weeks of paid parental leave for birth parents, family planning support, 16 hours annually of fully paid Volunteer Time Off, partnering with Benevity to support volunteer event opportunities globally, and a program encouraging personal paths to wellness called “Wellness Your Way.”

Health and Wellness

Creating a culture where all colleagues feel supported and valued is paramount to our corporate mission.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led to unique challenges, and we are striving to ensure the health, safety and general well-being of our colleagues.

In 2020, we introduced a mental health education program which will continue with quarterly events throughout 2021.

We continue to evolve our programs to meet our colleagues’ health and wellness needs, which we believe is essential to attract and retain employees of the highest caliber, and we offer a competitive benefits package focused on fostering work/life integration.

Available Information

We file Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”).

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The SEC maintains an internet site that contains reports, proxy and information statements and other information regarding our filings we file electronically with the SEC at www.sec.gov .

Our Board has adopted a Code of Business Conduct and Ethics that applies to all of our directors and employees.

The Code is posted on the corporate governance page of J2 Global’s website, and can be accessed at http://investor.j2global.com .

Any changes to or waiver of our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics for senior financial officers, executive officers or directors will be posted on that website.

Compared sentence by sentence after normalising whitespace, quotation marks, case and digits, so re-formatting and restated figures do not read as changed language. Wording changes appear as one removal and one addition. The current filing and the prior one are authoritative.

What changed 10-K

Item 1. Business