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Akamai to Acquire Linode

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Re: Akamai to Acquire Linode

#121

Post by freedomben »

telesilla wrote: post #104
aetherspawn wrote: post #58

I was really close to becoming a Linode customer last week for several large boxes, but ended up buying hardware and self-hosting. The cost to cut in an enterprise fiber link (1000/400) to our office was surprisingly low. My experience trialling linode as a paying customer was really positive (VERY competitive price, great performance), only complaint being their NodeBalancer can’t automatically handle certificates l…

We've moved to AWS since, but we started our early cloud infra on Linode and was always so impressed by their customer support. Genuine good quality. Let's hope it keeps going well.

Customer support really is top notch. Linode and DO are so close/competitive on most things, but the DO support is garbage and they will screw you over with no remorse. Linode on the other hand will answer you with a human who cares. Even if it's a stupid PEBKAC issue.

I may end up moving to AWS, but I'm dreading the pricing. Just estimating alone you damn near have to hire an expert. There's dozens of different ways to screw yourself and pay too much.

Re: Akamai to Acquire Linode

#122

Post by lucb1e »

lbotos wrote: post #101
tempnow987 wrote: post #20

I had a sour taste from what I remember being misleading communication around very serious control plane hacks of linode. A lot of bitcoin theft in 2012 (maybe by their own staff?) 2013 some kind of cold fusion / HTP hack Another CF / HTP hack here. 2014 brought the MySQL server no password stuff. 2015 ish some kind of total root compromise? You can get a feel for all this here including the denials / lack of notific…

Look, we are random internet people, and it's a "me vs. you" scenario, but as someone who worked at Linode in 2012, we were a small company, that all worked out of one office, with like 3 admins at the time. Yes, there were various hacks. Yes, there were silly vulns, but positing that one of the employees at that time stole bitcoin is something that I won't stand for. Could it have happened, sure. Do I think that it…

I think in 2012 the tech community's sentiment was actually that Bitcoin was really cool and definitely useful, since it was new and did things in a practical application that we hadn't seen before. It's interesting that hindsight clouds that, it has been viewed negatively for years now but it's not that old yet. (Either way, your main point stands of course.)

Re: Akamai to Acquire Linode

#123

Post by freedomben »

I'm very disappointed at all the negativity here. I get it, I'm worried too. I hate the modern trend of the exit always being an acquisition. I hate that the big companies scoop up the good little companies and ruin them. I hate it all. I feel very jaded too, and I'm very worried about what this means too. I have significant investment running on linode and I don't want to have to move it, which also means paying more, and settling for less.

But that said, we are missing a lot of details. As worried as I am, I'm going to give a company who really deserves the benefit of the doubt, the benefit of the doubt.

I would really, really appreciate a blog post or announcement or something though from Linode that details what things are changing and when. I know you may not know yet, but when you know if you could share I would greatly appreciate it.

Re: Akamai to Acquire Linode

#124

Post by ggm »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #16

One dying company absorbing another dying company. Linode has really gone down the tubes. Just try to find out what the prices are for their services. Or how to actually use any of the services they provide besides a VM instance. Can you find the magical documentation site without Google? I couldn't. And pricing for some services requires you to sign up for an account and attempt to deploy the service, or you have to…

> One dying company absorbing another dying company

You know Schlumberger and Bechtel have really tanked in the consumer branding, But I'd hesitate to say they are "dying"

I think there is no world in which Akamai can be said to be "dying"

Unless you have some knowledge of the balance sheet, This is hyperbole

Re: Akamai to Acquire Linode

#125

Post by freedomben »

stanislavb wrote: post #70
lukeqsee wrote: post #3

Really happy for Linode. I cannot say enough good things about the quality of their products and support. As a customer who's built significant value on their infrastructure, I'm a little bit worried about the impact this acquisition will have on their operations. I really hope it gives them the resources to improve on the same mission, and not the beginning of significant change!

As a long time Linode user, and I've given a try to others as well ... e.g. Digital Ocean, Linode's been my infrastructure choice for many many years.

Linode is like a Digital Ocean that has customer support and doesn't hate their small customers. I really hope they don't change too much.

Re: Akamai to Acquire Linode

#126

Post by cbhl »

Spooky23 wrote: post #110
rhizome wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Target should have had difficulty surviving as a company as a result of penalties-if-not-prison for their 2013 breach, but we see what happened there.

That’s a little over the top, eh? They disclosed within 4 days of discovery and implemented better security controls all over. They are probably the only major retailer with chip and pin payments in the US, for example. If you think they were unique or egregious in terms of 3rd party access to networks, i am afraid that you will find reality disappointing.

I will say I was pleasantly surprised to discover that their store credit card comes without a magstripe on the back

Re: Akamai to Acquire Linode

#127

Post by shirro »

I can't think of many cases where an acquisition served customers well. Often the distinctive things that make a company appealing are lost as costs are slashed, good staff flee and the parent tries to capture customers into their existing products and services.

My impression of Akamai was always if you have to ask the price then you can't afford it. It seems an odd match. I guess the thinking is that they both have to compete with AWS and provide a one stop shop which is probably true to some extent but certainly not for a customer like me.

I have been a small Linode customer off and on for over 15 years and in that time they have had ups and downs, made very public mistakes and learned from them. Overall they generally supplied a competitive product and decent customer service. So I hope this works out well for all involved. If not there is lots of competition still in this space.

Re: Akamai to Acquire Linode

#128

Post by lucb1e »

ipaddr wrote: post #112
systemvoltage wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Cloudflare is thinking about acquiring DO to round up their next-gen cloud. DO's UI has gone downhill since 2017. It is so bloated and large. Used to be very compact. Folks from Cloudflare if you're reading this - please keep your UI compact. Your main UI (Dashboard) looks more compact that the docs[1] which are too sparse and terrible for developers who are not average consumers. They can handle the comp…

Digital ocean makes a hundred fifty million more in revenue and 50 million more in profits. I don't think digital ocean will acquire them or merge.

What are you comparing? Surely DigitalOcean isn't bigger than Cloudflare or do I have my perception entirely backwards? Guessing that you're comparing DigitalOcean to Linode instead, 50M seems like a very small difference actually.

Btw I find the large split words as numbers ("makes 150M more" -> "makes a hundred fifty million more") quite hard to read, but maybe that's just me.

Re: Akamai to Acquire Linode

#129

Post by tomxor »

freedomben wrote: post #123

I'm very disappointed at all the negativity here. I get it, I'm worried too. I hate the modern trend of the exit always being an acquisition. I hate that the big companies scoop up the good little companies and ruin them. I hate it all. I feel very jaded too, and I'm very worried about what this means too. I have significant investment running on linode and I don't want to have to move it, which also means paying mor…

Agreed. I think we are all a bit too wary of destructive or anticompetitive acquisitions... but this really doesn't look like one of them, from what I understand they genuinely complement each other.

Linode already use some of Cloudflare as part of their offering e.g nameservers, so I can already see how Akamai could begin to replace those under the hood and then augment Linode's existing services further to offer new capabilities to the small customers (that's how I envision it happening, Linode has a good customer experience and the Linode Manager is very polished now so it would make sense that Akamai would lean on it).

I'm discounting all the anecdotes and handful of past explosions, as any company as old as Linode will have them, and I find comparisons to AWS kind of absurd where you will likely be talking to a robot.

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