I'd say any competitor worth worrying about would be able to build an equivalent system from scratch pretty easily, so I don't think they're risking that much.

I'd say any competitor worth worrying about would be able to build an equivalent system from scratch pretty easily, so I don't think they're risking that much. Convincing users that you'll be trustworthy, secure and around in 5-10 years is a much greater hurdle. On the other hand, I read this article and I read their last one, when it too shot to the top of HN. Geeks go nuts for hardware porn, and are a great audience to sell these kinds of services to. So the marketing benefits are probably quite substantial.