freelancer.com

Freelancer has acquired several crowdsourcing marketplaces including Get A Freelancer.com and EUFreelance.com (founded by Magnus Tibell in 2004, Sweden), Scriptlance.com (founded by Rene Trescases in 2001, Canada)- one of the early pioneers in freelancing, Freelancer.de Booking Center (Germany), Freelancer.co.uk (United Kingdom), Webmaster-talk.com (USA), a forum for webmasters, and vWorker (founded by Ian Ippolito, USA).

As of 29 March 2016, the company has set up 44 regional marketplaces and operates in 34 languages and 21 currencies, including India and Latin America. On 2 April 2014, Freelancer acquired Ukraine-based digital content marketplace Fantero.

In April 2014, Freelancer acquired The Warrior Forum, a marketing community site, for $3.2M

In April 2015, Freelancer acquired Escrow.com, a provider of Internet escrow services based in the United States.

In December 2016, the company acquired Brazilian job market service Prolancer as well as the Spanish career marketplace Nubelo.

Freelancer has taken steps to enter the freight marketplace business through their subsidiary Frieghtlancer.com. In 2018, Freelancer acquired the Australian enterprise marketplace Channel 40, which connects freight owners with transport operators. In May 2021, the company acquired Loadshift, a business that connects shippers and carriers in heavy transport services.

Legal issues

2015–2017

In December 2015, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) found Freelancer at fault for breaching the Privacy Act by violating the privacy rights of a former user and awarded that individual $20,000 in aggravated damages when Freelancer employees publicly exposed on Wikipedia and elsewhere the individual's private information, IP addresses, pseudonyms and other details after the individual wrote several critical comments and personal blog posts about the company. OAIC further ordered Freelancer to issue a written apology to the individual and for staff to undergo additional training on the handling of sensitive personally identifiable information. Spokespersons speaking on behalf of the company expressed their intent to appeal the ruling.

2018

In March 2018, it was reported that Freelancer was facing another complaint with the OAIC. Claiming damages of over $60,000 a complainant from the European Union alleges Freelancer's conduct in regard to privacy is in violation of Australian and European privacy legislation alike, a fact that would affect all of Freelancer's European customers, according to the complaint. Freelancer has not commented on the allegation.