Because they don't want to sell it to anyone who has ever heard of Linode. They are going to sell through their existing corporate sales contacts, as a new cloud compute offering by your pals at Akamai.
Does it mean that people who use Linode for Linode should be preparing to move out?
This is what I've been worried about since the acquisition. I've been a loyal customer for over a decade and hosted jsonip.com there for 12 years.
Now I seriously need to look for alternative hosting if/when the corpo overlords decide to start changing the offered products.
At least been with Linode for the last 15 years, I'm used to the brand, you change it, I may just leave. Linode was solid for me over the years, I noticed DigitalOcean might be a big threat to it early on, now might be the time for me to finally migrate there.
I don't get what the big deal is about the name.
Yes, I like linode and run most of my business on it.
They changed the name.
I'm not switching until they "kill" the product. If the uptime remains good, the service remains good, why switch??
I'm sure they spent a lot of time thinking about this, but why not just call it something "Linode by Akamai" or "Akamai Linode"? Neither "Akamai’s cloud computing services" or "Akamai Connected Cloud" sound like viable names. Is the goal just to get people to say "I use Akamai"? I could even see a viable strategy where they rename the existing Linode but create a new Linode, ala Lightsail just to keep the name. They…
I don't know if it is just me, but I think that names of the form "X by Y" come across as particularly soulless and makes it look like X was just gobbled up by private equity and turned into a small department.
I'm hoping this means they will finally build a cloud product that can compete, but if the same management is there, probably not. What a sad product lineup and UX. DO, Hetzner, etc have much better products. But nerds love pushing buttons and looking at stats, so somehow Linode's limited functionality and constant maintenance-induced downtime don't seem to faze them. Brands are so weird. If they wanted to, they coul…
What products does DO offer that Linode doesn’t?
I always thought they seemed pretty much equivalent for both price and features (though Linode did take an age to implement cloud firewalls).
I’ve personally hosted about 30 servers with them for about 15 years, did look at DO a few times but it didn’t seem worthwhile to migrate everything over (and I preferred that Linode were privately owned vs the VC backed DO).
I'm sure they spent a lot of time thinking about this, but why not just call it something "Linode by Akamai" or "Akamai Linode"? Neither "Akamai’s cloud computing services" or "Akamai Connected Cloud" sound like viable names. Is the goal just to get people to say "I use Akamai"? I could even see a viable strategy where they rename the existing Linode but create a new Linode, ala Lightsail just to keep the name. They…
> They were running sponsorships using the Linode name on various media sites throughout last year, and I think even this year. As recently as 2 days ago (the day before this was announced): https://youtu.be/b-WFetQjifc?t=51s
Not unlikely the employees booking these ads weren't even aware of the rebranding at that time. Or weren't allowed to tell third parties and so pretended nothing would change.
I wonder how employees feel about that change and how they feel since the acquisition. A key determinant in whether I stay with Akamai or not is if I know there are competent developers behind the cloud that care and would use the service. Other determinants: simplicity, performance in the UI and pricing that makes sense for an individual developer. It feels like Linode was small enough to care, which was a key diffe…
> Other determinants: simplicity, performance in the UI and pricing that makes sense for an individual developer. This is my main fear: morphing into some AWSgoogleCloudflare behemoth with a bazillion knobs and complex unpredictable pricing plans. I choose Linode specifically to avoid that time sink. Thankfully there are other's that are supposed to be similar to Linode in this respect, but I've grown to like Linode…
Also, the few times over the years (more than 10) when I had to get hold of their customer service they were pretty good. Last time around I contacted them on a Sunday afternoon and they got back to me later that evening, no AI automatic response, no other bs like that.
We used linode since 2007, and the experience was good. Would be sad for it to end up being swallowed by some huge soulless corporation which is acutely aware of preserving their own brand.
It's funny to see Akamai called a soulless corp. I still remember when they IPO'd in late 1999. It was viewed very positively in academic circles too.
Incidentally, I just looked at the stock price from back then and it was higher than it is now. Post dotcom bubble the stock never reached those highs again.
Just yesterday I watched an MJD video on YouTube (mostly retro PC and OS videos) and he always mentions being sponsored by Linode. Since I like MJD, I was inclined to like Linode by association. Bummer it's going away.
So now you'll be inclined to like Akamai by association, what's the actual difference? Imagine the next generation of VPS in 10-15 years - will they really care about the name "Linode" or "Akamai" as long as it's a great product?
I have a strong suspicion that the sponsorships will be going away now.
Akamai killed the enthusiast-run Linode to instead create executive-run cloud computing services. That is what the difference is, and why these news are so worrisome for enthusiasts.
I’m curious to the reasoning behind a decision like this. Part of what Akamai bought was the Linode brand name. Anecdotally as a user Linode’s brand seems to have a fair bit of value and positive reputation. Havent they just written off a non-trivial amount of value from what they just acquired? Or is it as simple as they really want brand consistency?
Our marketing team is crap, there’s no consistency e.g. we acquired prolexic and still use that brand.
Internally a number of the engineers are scratching our heads at this one.
“Going forward, Akamai’s rent-a-server cloud services will be called Linode” would have been a better solution, yeah. So the way you say “Amazon EC2” or “Amazon AWS”, you’d say “Akamai Linode”. The only downside is that inevitably people would shorten that to “Linode” instead of “Akamai”, which hurts brand recognition. And I guess that downside is significant enough to cause them to go with this bland “Akamai’s cloud…
Yeah except I don't want 'cloud services' I want a VPS, people who want a VPS are never going to look at Akamai branded that way.
And people who "just" want a VPS are probably not Akamai's target market, so I think they're fine with the tradeoff.