Let us not permit companies to co-opt language for their benefit.
If it was genuinely pro bono ( lit: for the public good ) then they would have taken all steps possible to keep the site online since the public good was served more by having Mr Krebs online than not.
However, in this case they were hosting him free-of-charge because it was good publicity for them. That's a very different scenario.
Besides, pro bono isn't literally "for the public good", it is literally "for good".
Finally - that is a ridiculous standard to hold everything categorized as "pro bono" to. Law firms oftentimes take on cases/clients that can't afford their services, pro bono. Because they call it pro bono, does that necessitate that said law firm should continue to fight all pro bono cases in court until either A. they win or B. they go bankrupt? Of course not.
Well, to be fair to the parent poster (and without going deeper into the merits of this side-argument), I'd note that the expression "pro bono" as generally used in English is actually short for "pro bono publico" which does in fact mean "for the public good".
Law firms (and other professional services firms) call it "pro bono" when they use their specific skill-set to provide their services to those (e.g. the indigent) who couldn't otherwise afford them.
In that example, it's the fact that the indigent can get access to quality legal representation which is itself considered the "public good".
I get that. My point about law firms is that most of them won't take pro bono cases all the way to the supreme court (or equivalent). i.e. there is a limit to how much manpower they are will to expend on a charity case.
In the same way, expecting Akamai to provide free service to Krebs until the end of time because it was referred to as pro bono (even if it was them, which it wasn't) would be silly.
tl;dr - Akamai provided a service that could be seen as publicly beneficial. As long as they were providing free service to Krebs, they were doing something that was arguably pro bono. Them no longer choosing to provide that service does not retroactively detract from its public benefit.
Let us not permit companies to co-opt language for their benefit.
If it was genuinely pro bono ( lit: for the public good ) then they would have taken all steps possible to keep the site online since the public good was served more by having Mr Krebs online than not.
However, in this case they were hosting him free-of-charge because it was good publicity for them. That's a very different scenario.