[HN Gopher] Akamai to Acquire Linode
___________________________________________________________________
Akamai to Acquire Linode
Author : nycdatasci
Score : 328 points
Date : 2022-02-15 21:10 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.akamai.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.akamai.com)
| aetherspawn wrote:
| 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 like CF and AWS can.
|
| Also, it needs to be mentioned because there's a lot of negative
| in this thread: HUGE shout out to Linode for being massive
| community supporters and donating HEAPS of free compute to uni
| clubs and such, pretty much anyone with a charity certificate who
| asks for it. Fantastic company that's easy to 'just talk to
| people' rather than trying to find the right support silo.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I can't wait until I can just setup a database, nodes and it will
| just handle auto scaling, maintenance and tuning by itself - on
| my own hardware.
|
| It's crazy how much you need to know to do the above.
|
| Akamai - make it happen!
| mastazi wrote:
| Congrats Linode. I switched back to Linode after a few years on
| Digitalocean (I wanted the server to be located in my country and
| Linode offers that), I was really happy to see how much it has
| evolved since the last time I had used it circa 2013
| ehayes wrote:
| Crap, I was just telling someone how much I liked Linode.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I think the only reason that I browsed this is that Linode hosts
| a mattermost instance of mine, I'm happy with them, and I don't
| want anything to change.
| 37ef_ced3 wrote:
| I love Linode. Strongly recommended.
|
| For many years, I have run all my websites and services (back-
| ends for apps, etc.) on a few $5/month Nanodes.
|
| For temporary/experimental stuff I sometimes use Vultr and
| Digital Ocean, but Linode's service and reliability is superior
| (especially versus Vultr). Linode is just top-notch.
| slig wrote:
| Love Linode, unfortunately had to migrate away to DO because K8S
| and managed Postgres.
| mjrpes wrote:
| Managed databases should be coming soon to Linode:
| https://www.linode.com/products/databases/
| slig wrote:
| Great! If they let me have K8S clusters with 0 nodes I'll
| move back there.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Did not see this coming. Interesting development.
| donohoe wrote:
| After dealing with Akamai at a past role I can only offer my
| condolences to Linode customers.
| drcongo wrote:
| I'm trying to think of an Akamai acquisition that has worked
| out but coming up blank.
| ritcgab wrote:
| I have moved away from Linode since they started billing VMs in
| hours. I don't like that cloud bs.
| curiousmindz wrote:
| Linode is a fairly underrated provider. Getting acquired will
| hopefully bring them more visibility.
|
| For Akamai, I wonder if this acquisition will have a negative
| impact on their ability to work with other providers who are now
| competitors. Similar to how AWS has trouble signing clients in
| the retail industry.
| kodah wrote:
| How does DigitalOcean compare to Linode these days? One thing I
| noticed off the bat is that Linode still offers phone and email
| support, versus just a ticketing system interface.
| lukeqsee wrote:
| And they answer the phone.
|
| I've called their support line many times to report business-
| impacting issues, and they always answer within seconds
| (literally), provide competent support, follow-up, and
| genuinely _care_. Linode support may be better than Amex
| Platinum Card support. :-)
| Y-bar wrote:
| I use DO and have no plans of moving away from there, because
| on a technical and cost level I am happy with their offering,
| but I can agree that their customer service is not at all
| good.
| silisili wrote:
| > Linode support may be better than Amex Platinum Card
| support.
|
| If talking about today, almost assuredly given your
| description.
|
| This is pretty offtopic to the OP but I felt compelled to
| chime in as it really irritates me, that Amex support has
| gone into the toilet over the past 2 years or so. I remember
| a time when you called, and someone would just answer "hello
| mr xxx" if it was the number on file. Now it's phone menus,
| typing in your card number, other details, hold times,
| etc...even on Platinum support.
| lukeqsee wrote:
| Huh...I haven't had a Platinum Card for a few years (some
| other cards provided better value), but that's
| disappointing.
| istjohn wrote:
| I tried DO after using Linode for a few years, and DO felt more
| polished and streamlined. DO's docs are great, too. But I
| honestly have no complaints with Linode. Note that I'm just
| running Nginx on a $5/mo VPS.
| prirun wrote:
| I've had a Linode for many years with no problems, and have
| had to use their excellent phone service once.
|
| I tried DO and hated it because they used a zillion 3rd-party
| services on all their internal web pages (after being signed
| in) so I was in a constant battle enabling things with
| NoScript.
|
| I have a small Vultr VM I use for testing. Their site didn't
| require enabling a bunch of 3rd-party domains. They've been
| rock solid as well, like Linode, and cheap as dirt: I have a
| small VM with IP4 from years ago for $2.50/mo
| seanw444 wrote:
| You may have convinced me to move over to Vultr.
| Macha wrote:
| Linode has better support, DigitalOcean is a lot closer to a
| cloud-lite setup with better APIs for automation etc.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| 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 complexity.
| They also appear to be designed by two separate UI design
| teams. You guys need an authoritarian designer at the top.
|
| [1] https://developers.cloudflare.com/
| technofiend wrote:
| Their website is more complex, but they offer many more
| services than before. Not sure what else they could to do
| streamline things? Prices have gone up a bit as well, but to
| be expected to a certain degree. Still, I like them for their
| fixed pricing and no surprise bills at the end of the month.
| My only complaint is they have a tendency to kill some
| processes with no warning and no ticket. I'd be fine if they
| created a ticket to say "Hey, we're killing this process
| because we're not sure you want to run it, if you do click
| here to add it to an exclusion list" rather than silently
| killing it.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I really hope Linode stays available self-serve, even if it
| transitions to an Akamai hostname for server management. The
| current Akamai availability is super limited and you'll often
| need to give them a call if you want to run any regular traffic
| through them or use a product not included in the free trial of
| their services.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Oh no. Please no. I hope there's a competitor to grow in Linode's
| place.
| humanwhosits wrote:
| I liked using Linode, though I can't help but feel some
| apprehension about what will happen to it in the medium/long term
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| This worries me. I've been a happy Linode customer for a while.
| I've mostly only noticed Akamai when they were screwing something
| up for one of their customers. I try to be ready to migrate off
| of any service like this at the drop of a hat, but I suppose this
| is a good reminder to test my plans for getting off Linode, just
| in case.
| danpalmer wrote:
| This is an interesting mix. In my experience Linode has a good UX
| and is well targeted at SMEs, whereas I'm not sure anyone has
| bought an Akamai contract anywhere but a golf course, and it has
| a UX to match.
|
| Is this Akamai trying to buy access to a market who would
| previously not even consider them, or is it Akamai trying to buy
| access to the more general cloud infrastructure market? If
| they're trying to do both I can't see it going down well.
| cauterize wrote:
| We failed to build Linode like things internally. We innovate
| through acquisition.
|
| [ source: I was a part of those failures ]
| soapdog wrote:
| I hope nothing changes for the service. I've been a happy
| customer for more than a decade.
| angst_ridden wrote:
| I have a lot of infrastructure on Linode, and have been a
| customer for many years. I've been very happy with the
| price/performance, especially compared with large providers some
| of my customers use like Rackspace.
|
| I hope that being part of a public company won't cause too much
| pressure to reduce services or raise prices.
| Neil44 wrote:
| Same, I moved from rackspace to linode and never looked back.
| hughrr wrote:
| To be fair moving from rackspace to an OVH datacentre that's
| on fire is a step up from my experience. I occasionally have
| to deal with a Rackspace acquisition and it's hell.
| Croftengea wrote:
| From Linode blog: For the immediate future, we
| will continue to operate as we always have. Akamai has no
| intention of changing what has made us successful. This
| acquisition will propel us both forward -- not take anything
| away. Linode will soon be able to call on the power of Akamai to
| offer entirely new products, services, expertise, locations, and
| scale, while Akamai will be able to tap into Linode's deep
| expertise in compute, storage, and on-demand infrastructure-as-a-
| service.
|
| https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/linode-and-akamai/
|
| I like Linode and been with them for ~5 years. Their pricing
| didn't change much (if at all) during that time but hosting
| landscape got more competitive since then. Hetzner and OVH offer
| a better value I believe. I hope Akamai's resources will help
| them to not lose in the long run.
| apple4ever wrote:
| > Akamai has no intention of changing what has made us
| successful
|
| All the buyers say that now. In 2 years, it will change.
| youngtaff wrote:
| Yeh, why buy them if things aren't going to change...
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| 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 go through a
| "professional services" team for a "quote".
|
| DigitalOcean and AWS don't have a problem directing users toward
| product information or docs, and they provide a simple web UI to
| use all their services. But Linode can't seem to grasp it, after
| _years_ of trying to roll out a new web UI. Rather than provide
| you simple managed services wrapped around specific technology,
| they provide "scripts" you can execute as a single VM boots up.
| They can't even show you how to create a VPC without burying it 4
| levels deep in a drop-down menu of a specific linode created in a
| specific region.
|
| I got so fed up with it that I moved my one remaining linode off
| to DO. Not only do they have more services in more regions, but I
| can actually find the information I need to make changes.
| floatboth wrote:
| How is Akamai dying? Isn't Akamai still the largest CDN around?
| youngtaff wrote:
| Enterprise only sales model and has traditionally been very
| expensive and hard to buy.
|
| When they launched their Image Manager product them had
| trouble persuading sales people to sell it are it reduced
| bandwidth charges
|
| The legacy of lots of PoPs makes them expensive to run, and
| purges take longer but ironically may help when it cones to
| moving content to be really close to the end user
| dan1234 wrote:
| Pricing is at https://www.linode.com/pricing/ (Don't think
| there's anything you need to sign up to see). Docs are at
| https://www.linode.com/docs/
|
| Both are the top menu.
| dangrossman wrote:
| I'm not understanding what you want to be different. Pricing
| and docs are both linked to from the menu at the top of the
| Linode.com homepage. I did not need to do any searching,
| figurative or literal, to find them.
|
| > Just try to find out what the prices are for their services.
|
| From the Linode.com homepage, click "products" in the main
| menu, click any product, and the pricing is on the page.
| There's a "view full price list" link on each page to a price
| list for all products on a single page:
|
| https://www.linode.com/pricing/
|
| > Can you find the magical documentation site without Google?
|
| From the Linode.com homepage, click "Docs" at the top. "Docs"
| is linked to https://www.linode.com/docs/
|
| If you start from a product page, each contains a direct link
| to that product's section of the docs. For example, the
| Kubernetes page links directly to
| https://www.linode.com/docs/products/compute/kubernetes/ with
| the link "View product documentation >", above the fold.
| dsl wrote:
| I think this is Akamai figuring out they need to address the
| self-serve market.
|
| Akamai has 6x the edge network footprint of Cloudflare and has
| all the cool trendy stuff like edge workers, they just suck at
| selling to the developer.
| lflux wrote:
| Have they gotten faster at applying updates? it would take
| something like 45 minutes to an hour to make any changes back
| in 2014, when Fastly was doing sub-minute updates for any CDN
| changes.
| jsizzle wrote:
| Yes, Akamai let's you deploy changes within minutes if not
| quicker, that changes several years ago.
| fomine3 wrote:
| They should just expand their services to individual/small
| business
| chairmanwow1 wrote:
| They explicitly choose not to sell to the developer. They want
| big fish customers. This is why I can't find pricing on their
| homepage.
| recuter wrote:
| One could reasonably conclude that they will start doing this
| soon under their newly acquired Linode subsidiary.
| wmf wrote:
| Or they'll make Linode "call for pricing".
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Historically that's all there was. Random companies didn't
| need CDNs and associated services. They ran a couple servers
| in a data-center somewhere and called it good. Not like a
| website for a company that manufactures dairy processing
| equipment needs to handle a lot of load. The big corporate
| customers where who bought that stuff. Then AWS came along.
|
| It's a classic case of not seeing the up and coming market
| because you were winning the existing market.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Not to mention that until they finally had a first-class
| Terraform provider, their CDN was absolute nightmare to manage
| at-scale. If you only have a handful of properties then sure,
| it's fine. You can just point-and-click your way around and
| make it work. Anything more than that and it was very painful.
| Thaxll wrote:
| "they just suck at selling to the developer."
|
| They have all the major compagnies / F500, though so no need to
| appeal to the HN crowd.
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| Yep, that's exactly how large businesses like IBM and HP have
| failed.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Ah yes, the terrible failure of _checks notes_ $116.46
| billion market cap.
|
| https://companiesmarketcap.com/ibm/marketcap/
| duped wrote:
| Down 35% over the past ten years, which is terrible
| vel0city wrote:
| They're doing so terrible, only making $5.7B in profit in
| 2021.
|
| I wish I could fail so hard.
| ehayes wrote:
| Linode's blog post: https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/linode-
| and-akamai/
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| And thus was born a new entrant into the large public cloud
| space. Congrats Linode!
|
| I'm guessing Digital Ocean will be next.
| benatkin wrote:
| It seems like a massive acquihire to me - similar to Heroku.
|
| I don't think that DigitalOcean will be acquihired.
| Elof wrote:
| Definitely not an acquihire. Linode build a super solid
| business without taking any venture.
| [deleted]
| mlyle wrote:
| $900M is pretty steep to acquire about 200 employees, of whom
| only a small fraction are technical.
|
| Nah, this is about acquiring a business for 9x revenue...
| samwillis wrote:
| 18 years is a long time to run a business, I believe Linode
| hasn't had much outside investment. I suspect the founding
| team are looking to exit and will slowly pull back over the
| next couple of years.
| [deleted]
| antoniuschan99 wrote:
| Less chance b/c DO is public now!
| benatkin wrote:
| Yeah, it would be quite an acquihire, and I am already
| stretching the definition by including Heroku!
|
| A true acquisition still is a strong possibility, but
| certainly far less likely than before the IPO, and it might
| be described as a merger.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Congrats caker and team!
| tempnow987 wrote:
| 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 notification.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10845985
|
| Maybe 2016 same issue?
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/cloud-firm-linode-resets-user-...
|
| Not a company I'd put much actual production onto. Imagine if AWS
| had a hacker running around with total root access, able to reset
| MFA tokens to their own etc with no notice to customers. I'm not
| even sure such root access exists on AWS.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| You can't just imply that the linode staff assisted or were
| involved in stealing crypto currency from their customers
| without actually providing any evidence.
| INTPenis wrote:
| I hate to say it but I recently moved away from Linode after
| their /64 block in Frankfurt was banned by all Google services.
| And even though all their kubernetes nodes have a public ipv4
| address they were somehow unable to fallback on this when their
| ipv6 didn't work.
|
| And when I suggested this to their support they acted like I
| was crazy and said there is no way to switch between ipv4 and
| ipv6. Well I don't work in networking but I do work for a major
| telco and I know our networking guys could have done that
| routing change, easy.
| unilynx wrote:
| Are you referring to the geoip issue ?
| https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/-/issues/28769
|
| This was resolved and it didn't appear something nefarious or
| any kind of ban was going on, so if you have some references
| I'd love to see them
| benatkin wrote:
| Yep, confirmation from their staff here:
|
| https://www.linode.com/community/questions/22243/google-
| and-...
| hughrr wrote:
| We blocked the entire of Linode AS63949 ranges because we
| were getting attacked from random owned nodes and it was
| tripping our IDS constantly. Just got fed up with it in the
| end and decided to hose them.
|
| To note, we have had problems with AWS blocking random
| addresses as well where we've had staff abroad.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| A 2012 Bitcoin hack victim was none other than a lead developer
| of Bitcoin. Back then, they ran a Bitcoin faucet on it that
| gave out a paltry 0.25 Bitcoin at a time.
|
| I never bothered to jump through those hoops for like a dollar
| (now about US$10k):
|
| http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2012/03/bitcoin-faucet-hacked....
|
| He only lost 5 bitcoin (like $20 then or $200k today), but
| another lost 3100, or around... $124 million today:
|
| https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66916.0
|
| They ran a Bitcoin mining pool and this hack motivated them to
| create a hardware wallet:
|
| https://blog.trezor.io/how-trezor-was-born-from-a-hacking-at...
| tempnow987 wrote:
| Wow, that some major root level compromise at linode. It's
| interesting how quiet they kept these things in those days.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| One of the many reasons every country needs more serious,
| standard, and mandatory public disclosure laws for cloud
| infrastructure breaches.
| folmar wrote:
| Looking from the end user end it seems nice, but will
| soon be weaponized in all possible mannar, sloppily
| executed, and too much data to ingest.
|
| For reference there is mandatory disclosure of (serious)
| data breaches in the GPDR and it's very uncommon that the
| disclosure actually occurs.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The one thing I don't understand is if that many coins were
| stolen and every transaction is traceable shouldn't there be
| a trail? The owner has 124 million reasons to find those
| coins. Is the ability to track past transactions not as
| possible as it seems?
| glofish wrote:
| somebody please explain to me how is it possible that the
| owner reports losing $124 million, then they casually mention
| in the reply that: no problem, I'll just cover it with my own
| money ...
|
| (another recent story on ether hack had the same "resolution"
| the organization just chose to replaced the losses) ...
|
| where is that money coming from? does not seem real
| dsl wrote:
| Because back then the price of bitcoin was much lower. It
| is $124 million in today dollars, like $1,000 in back then
| dollars.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| That's what it would be worth now. Was worth like 1/10000th
| of that back then. They probably covered it with their
| previously earned holdings that could have been another
| fraction of that.
| saghm wrote:
| I imagine they repaid the value of the bitcoins at the
| time, which would have been a lot less
| [deleted]
| vel0city wrote:
| The 3,094 BTC stolen happened in 2012. The price of BTC in
| March of 2012 was ~$3-5 USD, so ~$15,500K on the high end
| and ~$9,300 on the low end.
| Twirrim wrote:
| I ended up dropping Linode as a result of the hacks, after
| having been a customer for years, both because of the nature of
| the hacks, and how they communicated.
| imachine1980_ wrote:
| this worry me, any similar compromise in digital ocean for
| example?
| btgeekboy wrote:
| Not really a compromise but there was a point where they
| weren't wiping block devices by default:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6983097
|
| Not sure if that's changed. (Hopefully it has!)
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Enjoy the value of Linode. Hope Akamai doesn't ruin it.
| julik wrote:
| Same thoughts here, I've emigrated mostly to Linode, now a
| search begins to a decent small contender.
| [deleted]
| mindslight wrote:
| f. I've been using Linode since before "cloud" became a buzzword.
| I'm sure it's just a matter of time until the screws get turned.
| That seems to be the economic environment we're currently in,
| too.
|
| Maybe Akamai will stop blocking Linode IPs for their firewall
| snake oil? One can dream.
| teepo wrote:
| Great news for the Linode team. Another isolated silo for Akamai.
| Honestly the way Akamai pieces together product offerings through
| acquisitions to compete has made it very difficult to leverage
| their portfolio without hiring consulting firm to integrate a
| solution.
| lukeqsee wrote:
| 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!
| stanislavb wrote:
| 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.
| linuxlizard wrote:
| As another long time user of Linode, I have had nothing but
| good experiences with them. I hope their quality stays up.
| ivyirwin wrote:
| Same here. Linode has been my go to infrastructure ever since I
| decided I needed to leave MediaTemple and become serious about
| my server infrastructure. I feel like Linode made me a better
| developer by helping me learn the devOps side of the business.
| Back in the day, their guides were the best in the business,
| though I feel like DO is winning that game now, especially from
| an SEO standpoint. These days I look for DO guides on how to
| tune my Linode machines.
|
| Congrats to the Linode team, please don't leave us hanging!
| _nickwhite wrote:
| As a long time Linode user, I hung in there through a lot of
| service issues and growing pains. Linode has always been just one
| of a handful of providers I have, and I figured at _some_ point,
| all of these issues will result in a solid platform. Well, over
| the last couple years, Linode HAS achieved this, and is now one
| of my most reliable platforms.
|
| I also use Prolexic DDoS service from Akamai, which was a
| standalone company until 2014. Akamai bought them, and the
| service actually vastly improved, so let's hope that Linode +
| Akamai's size and buying power will result in something even
| better.
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(page generated 2022-02-15 23:00 UTC)