Rakuten, one of the leading technology companies in the world, is well known in many countries for empowering society through technology and innovation. Based in Tokyo, Rakuten has 14,000 employees, operations in 29 countries, and provides services to a billion users.  Rakuten has been named to the Forbes list of “World’s Most Innovative Companies” every year since 2012.

As part of its continued success and growth, Rakuten has acquired a number of companies in the U.S. and across the globe, including OverDrive in 2015.  Since then, there has been no disruption in how we’ve provided the services you need – in fact, we have helped our global network of libraries and schools reach record numbers of new users and checkouts.

We are proud to be part of a global family of unique and complementary services, and are already enjoying access to world-class capabilities in technology, customer engagement and exciting innovations.  We are working closely with many of our sister companies, and Steve Potash was appointed as an executive officer of the parent company.  As part of a unified branding strategy, OverDrive is changing our corporate brand name to Rakuten OverDrive on July 1 to align with other Rakuten companies in the U.S. (such as Rakuten Ebates) and around the world (e.g., Rakuten Kobo, Rakuten Viber). You will see this first on our main websites, overdrive.com and company.overdrive.com.

Our day-to-day service to you and your users has not changed, and will not change.  This change applies to our corporate brand only. It will not impact product names, such as the OverDrive App, OverDrive Marketplace, OverDrive Education, or Libby, and our legal name will also remain unchanged:  OverDrive, Inc.  We are honored to remain the market leader in delivering eBooks and audiobooks to libraries and schools worldwide, and we will continue to uphold our core principles of delivering world-class service and achieving a vision of A World Enlightened by Reading.

If you have any questions about this change, please contact your Account Specialist.  We look forward to continuing to serve you and your users as we always have.

We remain committed to preserving privacy and confidentiality for your users, which is equally important to Hiroshi Mikitani, founder and CEO of Rakuten. Mickey, as he is known, will welcome attendees to Digipalooza via video in August, and reinforces this commitment:  “To help you to achieve your important mission, I along with Steve and the OverDrive team, am personally committed to serving you and your readers with world-class services and technology.  We pledge to maintain your trust and confidence by preserving your readers’ privacy and confidentiality with the most advanced security and processes.  We hold sacred the trust you’ve established with your readers, and we are dedicated to upholding this trust in all that we do.”