21 ms·

Akamai to Acquire Linode

986 points by nycdatasci 5y ago

ploppyploppy 5y ago
Been a customer for > 10 years. Great company. I hope this is a positive turning point.
VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
And thus was born a new entrant into the large public cloud space. Congrats Linode! I'm guessing Digital Ocean will be next.
- benatkin 5y ago
  It seems like a massive acquihire to me - similar to Heroku. I don't think that DigitalOcean will be acquihired.
  - Elof 5y ago
    Definitely not an acquihire. Linode build a super solid business without taking any venture.
    - Elof 5y ago
      More info: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/akamai-tech-to-buy-linode-for-about-900-million-271644961664#:~:text=Akamai%20Technologies%20Inc.%20said%20Tuesday,revenue%20in%20fiscal%20year%202022 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/akamai-tech-to-buy-linode-....
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - mlyle 5y ago
    $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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      [deleted]
- antoniuschan99 5y ago
  Less chance b/c DO is public now!
  - benatkin 5y ago
    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.
    - antoniuschan99 5y ago
      I could see Oracle buying DO
lukeqsee 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
  - freedomben 5y ago
    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.
- linuxlizard 5y ago
  As another long time user of Linode, I have had nothing but good experiences with them. I hope their quality stays up.
- ivyirwin 5y ago
  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!
- perrygeo 5y ago
  I've been a happy Linode customer for a full decade now. One thing I've always appreciated is that they grew sustainably and sensibly, keeping a focus on core competencies (VMs, disks, networking) rather than offering dozens of new services a year to keep pace with AWS, GCP, etc. Compared to the confusing, complex, and often buggy interfaces provided by Big Cloud, Linode has always been a breath of fresh air. I hope Akamai will realize that Linode customers really value this simplicity. Don't complect it!
mastazi 5y ago
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 5y ago
Crap, I was just telling someone how much I liked Linode.
37ef_ced3 5y ago
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.
- westwardly 5y ago
  You've clearly never experienced their Fremont datacenter.
  - 37ef_ced3 5y ago
    For example, my https://NN-512.com https://NN-512.com is served by a Nanode in Linode's Fremont datacenter (45.56.92.68). That same Nanode has been running the back-end of an Android app for almost 5 years, on another port.
  - mnordhoff 5y ago
    They moved data centers (to Hurricane Electric Fremont 2). It's not unusually unreliable.
kodah 5y ago
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.
- Macha 5y ago
  Linode has better support, DigitalOcean is a lot closer to a cloud-lite setup with better APIs for automation etc.
- lukeqsee 5y ago
  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. :-)
  - silisili 5y ago
    > 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 5y ago
      Huh…I haven’t had a Platinum Card for a few years (some other cards provided better value), but that’s disappointing.
    - robbiet480 5y ago
      If you start the call via the app it adds a PIN code onto the phone number which will automatically bypass all the menus/identification stuff and take you directly to a person.
judge2020 5y ago
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.
soapdog 5y ago
I hope nothing changes for the service. I've been a happy customer for more than a decade.
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  I would start looking for a new Linode now. This is a story we all know the ending of. Akamai is nearly 10,000 people and is therefore incapable of operating at the human scale that made Linode good.
humanwhosits 5y ago
I liked using Linode, though I can't help but feel some apprehension about what will happen to it in the medium/long term
0xbadcafebee 5y ago
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.
- dangrossman 5y ago
  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/ 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/ 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/ https://www.linode.com/docs/products/compute/kubernetes/ with the link "View product documentation >", above the fold.
- dan1234 5y ago
  Pricing is at https://www.linode.com/pricing/ 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/ https://www.linode.com/docs/ Both are the top menu.
dsl 5y ago
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.
- napolux 5y ago
  Worked with Akamai in a company I was working with. That company is so rooted into the 90s that the Spice Girls look fresh and modern. :P
- Thaxll 5y ago
  "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 5y ago
    Yep, that's exactly how large businesses like IBM and HP have failed.
    - ForHackernews 5y ago
      Ah yes, the terrible failure of checks notes $116.46 billion market cap. https://companiesmarketcap.com/ibm/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/ibm/marketcap/
      - vel0city 5y ago
        They're doing so terrible, only making $5.7B in profit in 2021. I wish I could fail so hard.
        spaetzleesser 5y ago
        The best unicorns lose that much money in a year. Profits are for people who don’t “get it”
ehayes 5y ago
Linode's blog post: https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/linode-and-akamai/ https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/linode-and-akamai/
tempnow987 5y ago
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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10845985 Maybe 2016 same issue? https://www.zdnet.com/article/cloud-firm-linode-resets-user-passwords-after-suspected-hack/ 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.
- INTPenis 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    Are you referring to the geoip issue ? https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/-/issues/28769 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
    - INTPenis 5y ago
      I never said it was "nefarious", I'm saying it was badly handled and it brought down all services in an entire location for days, with no fallback to ipv4, no status communication from Linode. It's not malice, it's just incompetence. Why the block was banned I have no idea and I don't really care, it can happen and they need to be able to handle it. I literally had a support case asking what happened, no response, eventually I had to say "look, I'm moving now because all services are down, please tell me what is going on", no answer, I had to move to get my services back up.
baggy_trough 5y ago
Enjoy the value of Linode. Hope Akamai doesn't ruin it.
- julik 5y ago
  Same thoughts here, I've emigrated mostly to Linode, now a search begins to a decent small contender.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mindslight 5y ago
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 5y ago
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.
slig 5y ago
Love Linode, unfortunately had to migrate away to DO because K8S and managed Postgres.
- mjrpes 5y ago
  Managed databases should be coming soon to Linode: https://www.linode.com/products/databases/ https://www.linode.com/products/databases/
  - slig 5y ago
    Great! If they let me have K8S clusters with 0 nodes I'll move back there.
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      I’m not sure I understand that use case? What is the point of a cluster without nodes.
      - slig 5y ago
        I'm a K8S newbie, and running on DO, so take it with a grain of salt: I have a couple of `CronJob`s, running twice a day, that would run way faster on better hardware, but as far as I can tell, it's impossible to do so on DO unless I keep a cluster with a minimum of 1 node online all the time.
jonnycomputer 5y ago
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.
donohoe 5y ago
After dealing with Akamai at a past role I can only offer my condolences to Linode customers.
- drcongo 5y ago
  I'm trying to think of an Akamai acquisition that has worked out but coming up blank.
  - dv35z 5y ago
    Prolexic (security), Blaze.io ("front-end" web app performance), SOASTA (web performance monitoring) - all integrated into Akamai flagship products & continuously improved. Disclaimer: Worked @ Akamai
    - drcongo 5y ago
      Thanks, I hadn't heard of any of those but good to know they can be decent custodians.
- freedomben 5y ago
  Mind sharing your previous experience? Expensive? bad customer support? poor product?
curiousmindz 5y ago
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.
hoistbypetard 5y ago
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.
- freedomben 5y ago
  Where are you gonna go if you leave Linode? Do you know yet? Digital Ocean is the most similar, but after getting burned hard by them I will never put myself in that vulnerable position again. I've been pretty happy with OVH thus far, but at least last time I checked the US presence was minimal and that's important to my customers.
  - pbowyer 5y ago
    I've already moved most of my servers from Linode to UpCloud. I did this as the disk IO speed at UpCloud is insane and made some intensive apps measurably faster. The downside is price as UpCloud bundle less and charge for everything.
  - christophilus 5y ago
    For me, it’d be Vultr.
  - hoistbypetard 5y ago
    I currently have most of my stuff split between Digital Ocean and Linode. So if I had to move quickly, it'd be Digital Ocean. I'm going to be kicking the tires on Hetzner and Vultr soon, because DO is not a super satisfying backup plan for me. I've used Azure enough to get spun up quickly there, but that would be an unhappy upward adjustment on my budget or an unhappy downward adjustment on the performance I expect.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      Hetzner is good but I’ve found that their connection from EU to US is weak, apparently in Level 3 somewhere.
danpalmer 5y ago
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 5y ago
  We failed to build Linode like things internally. We innovate through acquisition. [ source: I was a part of those failures ]
  - freedomben 5y ago
    If you don't mind sharing, how long ago was this? And do you know if the attitude is, "this is hard and we blew it, let's by an expert and learn from them" or was it, "we only failed because <excuse> let's buy a starter platform and use it as the foundation?"
angst_ridden 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Same, I moved from rackspace to linode and never looked back.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    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.
  - geuis 5y ago
    Me too. Used a different service more than 15 years ago that provides a ton of resources at an inexpensive price, then it was bought by rack space. Quickly migrated to Linode after that. There aren't any clear alternatives to Linode this time.
Croftengea 5y ago
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/ 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 5y ago
  > Akamai has no intention of changing what has made us successful All the buyers say that now. In 2 years, it will change.
  - youngtaff 5y ago
    Yeh, why buy them if things aren't going to change…
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    I too, read this as ‘farewell, and thanks for all the fish’.
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    That sentence isn’t saying nothing will change, as some letters do.
eatonphil 5y ago
Congrats caker and team!
aetherspawn 5y ago
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.
- telesilla 5y ago
  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.
  - freedomben 5y ago
    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.
    - JanSt 5y ago
      I have only great experiences with DO support. Really fast and helpful. I even got some free credits ($50?) at some point for a small inconvenience .
  - danuker 5y ago
    Out of curiosity, why did you move to AWS?
endisneigh 5y ago
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!
imwillofficial 5y ago
Did not see this coming. Interesting development.
ritcgab 5y ago
I have moved away from Linode since they started billing VMs in hours. I don't like that cloud bs.
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  They bill VMs per hour for small duration VMs only. If it sticks around for months, they charge you the listed per-month price, which is less than the hourly rate * one month.
_nickwhite 5y ago
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.
- freedomben 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing regarding Prolexic. That does give me some hope. If Akamai helps polish up some of the rough edges (there aren't very many for the record) that would be great. I've been eagerly anticipating managed databases for a little while, as well as bare metal and some other things. Would be neat if those things happen a little faster now that they have bigger capital behind them.
WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
Oh no. Please no. I hope there’s a competitor to grow in Linode’s place.
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  You and me both.
- christophilus 5y ago
  Vultr is my pick.
ubermonkey 5y ago
awww, fuck. I used Slicehost for years, but they got swallowed by Rackspace and became unusable. Linode has been my home since then. I have no positive experiences with small providers who get swallowed by corporate borgs. :(
Klonoar 5y ago
Huh, is this a rare win for Philly tech? (Super open to being corrected here, just always found them interesting to be in Philly since I don't know of many tech co's there)
- ferdowsi 5y ago
  Comcast is a pretty big deal.
- eatonphil 5y ago
  dbt is pretty big. No exit event yet but surely it will come soon.
mmaunder 5y ago
Congrats Linode. Been a user since they launched. Even the diehards (like me) have moved a lot to AWS and competitors. Lindode's biz feels stuck in the previous decade, and I think the $900MM purchase price reflects that. Hopefully the founders had a great exit and move on to create new amazing things! Best of luck to the Linode team.
- freedomben 5y ago
  Interesting, I disagree but appreciate your perspective. AWS and competitors are just getting way too expensive and they're focusing so much on higher-level products. Some people just need a VM and a DB, and don't want to have to higher an expert just to estimate how much it will cost every month and pray they don't have something go viral that uses up a bunch of egress data. I don't see bigger companies moving yet (most of them are building their own infra on top of OpenShift and VMware), but I know a few small companies that are.
  - mmaunder 5y ago
    Check out spot instances. An example of how much more competitive and rapidly scaleable aws and friends are vs the old model.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
Maybe this one will be different but usually this kind of acquisition marks the peak of the company and from them on things will go downhill while the acquiring company absorbs them and enterprisifies them.
azinman2 5y ago
Lots of comments on how people now need to move off Linode, but I cannot imagine Akamai bought this to kill it off. It actually makes me happy as Akamai is a very professional company with a lot of networking talent. I hope they level up Linode while keeping the best parts.
- christophilus 5y ago
  I’m not optimistic, but will keep using Linode until proven otherwise. I can’t think of a single acquisition like this that has ever ended well (from a customer perspective). But there’s a first time for everything, and if anyone can do it it’s Linode.
rossdavidh 5y ago
I have been a Linode customer for most of their existence, and I mostly don't have to think about them. Which is awesome. I sure hope that doesn't change...
freedomben 5y ago
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.
- tomxor 5y ago
  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.
  - everfrustrated 5y ago
    I have had multi million dollar accounts with both Akamai and AWS. Akamai's support was woeful bordering on incompetent. AWS on the other had has been at a very high standard. And no robots.
    - tomxor 5y ago
      > Akamai's support was woeful bordering on incompetent. Isn't that the point? Akamai's weakness and Linode's strength. I've no experience with Akamai at all so i'm interested in your's. However support quality and service quality are not always correlated, especially when support has been highly siloed or outsourced. Obviously they affect each other, but are you able to distinguish them? Would you be able to offer us any insight into the quality of the service they provided separate from the support issues? > I have had multi million dollar accounts [...] AWS on the other had has been at a very high standard. And no robots. I mean, once you are paying millions you are guaranteed a real person. I was talking about the small scale support issues which from what I hear on AWS usually results in automated responses. This is where Linode and AWS definitely differ.
hparadiz 5y ago
Hope Akamai keeps that sweet old city office around. The data center they have in the bank vault is super cool.
shirro 5y ago
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.
- freedomben 5y ago
  I think you make reasonable points, but I'm hoping that this means Akamai was realizing that they need to get more into self-serve and started looking around for someone to buy (since that's what bigger companies always do these days). I may be that they want to be more like Linode. At least, that's what I'm hoping.
foxhop 5y ago
iam-TJ 5y ago
I've been using Linode since the mid 2000s when Chris Aker, the owner and CEO, provided support on IRC ( OFTC: caker) and the company only had two or three staff. Great to see how he built Linode organically to the scale it has reached. In the context of venture capital and Y-combinator its a good contrasting story on how successful a bootstrapped, patiently built, profitable sustainable business can become when the focus is on excellent (and personal) customer service.
lokl 5y ago
Linode's been solid for me for 15 years, I only moved some projects to Hetzner for better pricing. Linode staff were always very helpful, nothing but positive experiences. Hope their support will remain great.
ksec 5y ago
I have always had question in my mind how are Linode going to keep up with the investment required and competition from DO and Vultr which has more resources backing. It isn't just the cost in infrastructure any more. But all the software services and features from managed DB, K8s and different type of storage. Bare Metal is still coming soon. I also hope this opens up Akamai CDN / DDoS access to consumers rather than Enterprise. Not that it matter as much anymore in the era of Cloudflare. Hopefully this gives enough resources for Linode to continue and grow.
synergy20 5y ago
Using Linode since it started till today, it's stable and great and its support is also good(only used it twice out of ~20 years), but it kind of got overshadowed by digitalocean. All the best to Linode, I will keep using it unless something changed dramatically.
kornhole 5y ago
What a coincidence that Cloudflare today announced their switch from rCaptcha to hCaptcha. Now that I can assure people accessing my service that they won't get Googled, I have a good reason to switch from Linode VPN VPS to CF Argo tunnel.
- robbiet480 5y ago
  Cloudflare announced the switch from reCAPTCHA to hCaptcha on April 8th, 2020 https://blog.cloudflare.com/moving-from-recaptcha-to-hcaptcha/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/moving-from-recaptcha-to-hcaptch...
pabs3 5y ago
Should this and other recent acquisitions (AMD/Xilinx comes to mind) have been blocked due to antitrust concerns?
- nativeit 5y ago
  I'm not sure that this specifically would risk breaching any antitrust regulations. There is still plenty of competition in their respective sectors, Akamai and Linode are more or less complimenting one another's services with minimal overlap, there's nothing to suggest that this will result in any meaningful impact to the ability for open market influences to determine their pricing, it doesn't appear to generate any conflicting interests or provide either company with an unfair advantage over their competitors, and it doesn't grant Akamai any outsized leverage in any of its areas of interest. I'm personally of the opinion that a greater diversity of many smaller companies is almost always preferable to homogeneity and the anticompetitive inclinations that come with the vertically integrated corporations that currently plague a good bit of the tech sector, but Akamai + Linode doesn't strike me as the same kind of threat as the larger players. That said, I am a longtime happy Linode customer, and the prospect of anything coming along to dilute their current offerings and practices is concerning. But they've earned the benefit of the doubt, so until I have some specific reason to do otherwise I'll be sticking with them.
didip 5y ago
I have fond memories talking to Linode customer service when I was still a noob sysadmin. They were extremely helpful and polite. I hope that all the employees get good kickbacks from the sale.
slenk 5y ago
I will continue to give them a chance. They have proven in the past to be reliable and even though once, the hardware I was on was physically damaged and a lot of data lost, there support has been rock solid the whole time. Man I suck at typing positive reviews. Happy customer since 2012-03-13
nbzso 5y ago
Oh, snap. I am a longtime Linode customer. Somehow I fell disturbed by this news. Is there a valuable alternative out there? Just in case something happens with pricing or other things. You know what I mean.
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  I'm going to start looking, for sure. Just assume Akamai will ruin Linode within 24-36 months and plan accordingly.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I'm with the other guy, a couple years max. In the meantime maybe digital ocean or vultr? I'm not sure how you're using linode but you might give those two a gander.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
God rest your soul Linode, we hardly knew ye.
schmichael 5y ago
I think Linode is the only ad I’ve ever clicked on the internet. Around 2003 they were advertising via static banner ads on sourceforge.net, and I remember the offer being great for the time. Root in a “VM” (it was user mode Linux in those days) for something like $15/mo. I hung out in their IRC channel with caker and the early crew. I remember them talking about unboxing and racking servers and what their DCs were like. Can you imagine just casually chatting with someone who has intimate knowledge of your EC2 machine and its network?! It was a great time. I scored a free Xen VM when they were beta testing their transition and promptly had my first (and last so far!) experience getting a server hacked. Left it running with root ssh logins and a weak password. I migrated to other hosting services before the scandals hit I think. I’m glad to only have great memories and wish them all the best!
LH9000 5y ago
I was a customer back in the early days, congrats caker!
ilaksh 5y ago
Been a Linode customer for around 10 years. Most of the time has been very smooth. Easy to use, and easy on the wallet. Kind of the opposite of the AWS policy of sneaking up, grabbing you by the balls, and yanking. I feel bad for their customer support today. They have kind of trained people to go ahead and ask questions by being responsive. The number of dumb questions no one really knows the answer to will be at an all time high today. Anyway congrats to Aker and other staff, hope they can all retire comfortably or take a long vacation if they want.
geuis 5y ago
Goddamnit. I was already having a bad day. I've run jsonip.com off of linode for over a decade. They've been incredibly reliable as a hosting service. I don't have any experience with Akamai, but I generally find acquisitions are the death of any good service. Goddamn it.
7mpR4nd0 5y ago
If you work at Linode now is time to get the hell out. 250+ employees and barely anything to show for it. You fell behind DO and Vultr and caker took the easy way out. Follow your customers and leave.
shaleenb 5y ago
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ShakataGaNai 5y ago
My Linode account has been active since 2010-02-15, so more than a decade now. They've been a very solid option to use all this time. Part of the reason I love them, beyond their great service and competitive pricing... is the fact that I've never had to think about it. Sometimes I may not log into my Linode account for 6 months or more. Do they do a TON more stuff these days? Yes. But my standard bumpkin Linode instance keeps chugging along. Upgrade/replacement to new hardware? They handle it, I get alerts but otherwise I don't need to take action. I'm happy for them that they got bought, because it brings (hopefully) a lot of value to all those people who worked so hard to get to this point in time. However as a customer I worry, of course I worry. Clearly Akamai wants to be the next big cloud, not just a CDN. Linode wants to be that next big cloud too. So it's a great fit. But will that push to The Next Big Thing kill off what made them great for the little guys? Maybe. It'll still be good for their business, just bad for me.
outsomnia 5y ago
Linode netblocks are blackholed here, because of the endless abuse and spam from them.
todotask 5y ago
Linode was my first forayed to VPS for nearly 2 years and we move to UpCloud which has Singapore region and it claimed to offer server redundancy without additional costs.
sam0x17 5y ago
Happy linode user since 2004 when I was 13 years old. Has always been my go-to for just having a linux vps running somewhere in the cloud. Really can't complain hope the acquisition doesn't change anything about how they operate.
anyfactor 5y ago
TLDR: $900 Million
arrty88 5y ago
Congrats Linode. Been a happy customer for more than a decade. Cheers
zerop 5y ago
I have used Linode boxes and like the CPU performance I got. Didn’t have unexpected infra issues and never had to bother to setup HA.
codeisawesome 5y ago
Linode IRC folks taught me a bunch of linux many years ago on their channel. I was astounded by their patience towards my complete stupidity. Thank you Linode team & users, owe you a fair bit!
unixhero 5y ago
Linode holds a special place in my experience. I switched to DigitalOcean for better sbapshotting and even cheaper cheap vps'es, but I only have very good memories of Linode.
avodonosov 5y ago
Bad news. I have great experience with Linode, but had horrible experience with Akamai. Will need to change hosting soon, most likely.
nfoz 5y ago
So, what are some decent alternatives?
anovikov 5y ago
As usual, a company provided good service at low price, was people friendly, supported educational and open source uses and... got acquired by an old, high friction, bloated, expensive predatory monster.
sipos 5y ago
Really hope Akamai don't mess up Linode - I'm a long time happy customer of theirs. I hope this is positive for their employees, who made it what it is, too. I don't have a lot of use for it, but I think their load balancer could be better, so hopefully this will happen now.
seodisparate 5y ago
Been using Linode since 2019. Service worked as expected (worked well), and I hope that won't change after this. If I had to move, I'd have to go through the pain of setting up my website(s) again, but at least I have backups, so it's just a matter of time spent getting set up again..
pqdbr 5y ago
Longtime customer here (10+ years). I can only hope that now they finally set up a datacenter in Brazil!
sha016 5y ago
Love Linode, been a customer for years. The only support ticket I had to file was because of a copy/paste error on my end and support helped me resolve it quickly and effortlessly. Great performance and cost. Was really a no brainer when AWS wouldn't stop billing me for a service I shut down and I couldn't get through to a human.
webmobdev 5y ago
Damn it. Another small business swallowed. And now we'll have to deal with rising costs and awful customer support ...

986 points by nycdatasci 5y ago

Been a customer for > 10 years. Great company. I hope this is a positive turning point.

And thus was born a new entrant into the large public cloud space. Congrats Linode! I'm guessing Digital Ocean will be next.

benatkin 5y ago
It seems like a massive acquihire to me - similar to Heroku. I don't think that DigitalOcean will be acquihired.
- Elof 5y ago
  Definitely not an acquihire. Linode build a super solid business without taking any venture.
  - Elof 5y ago
    More info: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/akamai-tech-to-buy-linode-for-about-900-million-271644961664#:~:text=Akamai%20Technologies%20Inc.%20said%20Tuesday,revenue%20in%20fiscal%20year%202022 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/akamai-tech-to-buy-linode-....
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- mlyle 5y ago
  $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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    [deleted]
antoniuschan99 5y ago
Less chance b/c DO is public now!
- benatkin 5y ago
  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.
  - antoniuschan99 5y ago
    I could see Oracle buying DO

lukeqsee 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.
- freedomben 5y ago
  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.
linuxlizard 5y ago
As another long time user of Linode, I have had nothing but good experiences with them. I hope their quality stays up.
ivyirwin 5y ago
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!
perrygeo 5y ago
I've been a happy Linode customer for a full decade now. One thing I've always appreciated is that they grew sustainably and sensibly, keeping a focus on core competencies (VMs, disks, networking) rather than offering dozens of new services a year to keep pace with AWS, GCP, etc. Compared to the confusing, complex, and often buggy interfaces provided by Big Cloud, Linode has always been a breath of fresh air. I hope Akamai will realize that Linode customers really value this simplicity. Don't complect it!

mastazi 5y ago

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 5y ago

Crap, I was just telling someone how much I liked Linode.

37ef_ced3 5y ago

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.

westwardly 5y ago
You've clearly never experienced their Fremont datacenter.
- 37ef_ced3 5y ago
  For example, my https://NN-512.com https://NN-512.com is served by a Nanode in Linode's Fremont datacenter (45.56.92.68). That same Nanode has been running the back-end of an Android app for almost 5 years, on another port.
- mnordhoff 5y ago
  They moved data centers (to Hurricane Electric Fremont 2). It's not unusually unreliable.

kodah 5y ago

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.

Macha 5y ago
Linode has better support, DigitalOcean is a lot closer to a cloud-lite setup with better APIs for automation etc.
lukeqsee 5y ago
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. :-)
- silisili 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    Huh…I haven’t had a Platinum Card for a few years (some other cards provided better value), but that’s disappointing.
  - robbiet480 5y ago
    If you start the call via the app it adds a PIN code onto the phone number which will automatically bypass all the menus/identification stuff and take you directly to a person.

judge2020 5y ago

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.

soapdog 5y ago

I hope nothing changes for the service. I've been a happy customer for more than a decade.

ubermonkey 5y ago
I would start looking for a new Linode now. This is a story we all know the ending of. Akamai is nearly 10,000 people and is therefore incapable of operating at the human scale that made Linode good.

humanwhosits 5y ago

I liked using Linode, though I can't help but feel some apprehension about what will happen to it in the medium/long term

0xbadcafebee 5y ago

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.

dangrossman 5y ago
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/ 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/ 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/ https://www.linode.com/docs/products/compute/kubernetes/ with the link "View product documentation >", above the fold.
dan1234 5y ago
Pricing is at https://www.linode.com/pricing/ 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/ https://www.linode.com/docs/ Both are the top menu.

dsl 5y ago

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.

napolux 5y ago
Worked with Akamai in a company I was working with. That company is so rooted into the 90s that the Spice Girls look fresh and modern. :P
Thaxll 5y ago
"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 5y ago
  Yep, that's exactly how large businesses like IBM and HP have failed.
  - ForHackernews 5y ago
    Ah yes, the terrible failure of checks notes $116.46 billion market cap. https://companiesmarketcap.com/ibm/marketcap/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/ibm/marketcap/
    - vel0city 5y ago
      They're doing so terrible, only making $5.7B in profit in 2021. I wish I could fail so hard.
      - spaetzleesser 5y ago
        The best unicorns lose that much money in a year. Profits are for people who don’t “get it”

ehayes 5y ago

Linode's blog post: https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/linode-and-akamai/ https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/linode-and-akamai/

tempnow987 5y ago

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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10845985 Maybe 2016 same issue? https://www.zdnet.com/article/cloud-firm-linode-resets-user-passwords-after-suspected-hack/ 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.

INTPenis 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Are you referring to the geoip issue ? https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/-/issues/28769 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
  - INTPenis 5y ago
    I never said it was "nefarious", I'm saying it was badly handled and it brought down all services in an entire location for days, with no fallback to ipv4, no status communication from Linode. It's not malice, it's just incompetence. Why the block was banned I have no idea and I don't really care, it can happen and they need to be able to handle it. I literally had a support case asking what happened, no response, eventually I had to say "look, I'm moving now because all services are down, please tell me what is going on", no answer, I had to move to get my services back up.

baggy_trough 5y ago

Enjoy the value of Linode. Hope Akamai doesn't ruin it.

julik 5y ago
Same thoughts here, I've emigrated mostly to Linode, now a search begins to a decent small contender.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mindslight 5y ago

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 5y ago

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.

slig 5y ago

Love Linode, unfortunately had to migrate away to DO because K8S and managed Postgres.

mjrpes 5y ago
Managed databases should be coming soon to Linode: https://www.linode.com/products/databases/ https://www.linode.com/products/databases/
- slig 5y ago
  Great! If they let me have K8S clusters with 0 nodes I'll move back there.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    I’m not sure I understand that use case? What is the point of a cluster without nodes.
    - slig 5y ago
      I'm a K8S newbie, and running on DO, so take it with a grain of salt: I have a couple of `CronJob`s, running twice a day, that would run way faster on better hardware, but as far as I can tell, it's impossible to do so on DO unless I keep a cluster with a minimum of 1 node online all the time.

jonnycomputer 5y ago

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.

donohoe 5y ago

After dealing with Akamai at a past role I can only offer my condolences to Linode customers.

drcongo 5y ago
I'm trying to think of an Akamai acquisition that has worked out but coming up blank.
- dv35z 5y ago
  Prolexic (security), Blaze.io ("front-end" web app performance), SOASTA (web performance monitoring) - all integrated into Akamai flagship products & continuously improved. Disclaimer: Worked @ Akamai
  - drcongo 5y ago
    Thanks, I hadn't heard of any of those but good to know they can be decent custodians.
freedomben 5y ago
Mind sharing your previous experience? Expensive? bad customer support? poor product?

curiousmindz 5y ago

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.

hoistbypetard 5y ago

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.

freedomben 5y ago
Where are you gonna go if you leave Linode? Do you know yet? Digital Ocean is the most similar, but after getting burned hard by them I will never put myself in that vulnerable position again. I've been pretty happy with OVH thus far, but at least last time I checked the US presence was minimal and that's important to my customers.
- pbowyer 5y ago
  I've already moved most of my servers from Linode to UpCloud. I did this as the disk IO speed at UpCloud is insane and made some intensive apps measurably faster. The downside is price as UpCloud bundle less and charge for everything.
- christophilus 5y ago
  For me, it’d be Vultr.
- hoistbypetard 5y ago
  I currently have most of my stuff split between Digital Ocean and Linode. So if I had to move quickly, it'd be Digital Ocean. I'm going to be kicking the tires on Hetzner and Vultr soon, because DO is not a super satisfying backup plan for me. I've used Azure enough to get spun up quickly there, but that would be an unhappy upward adjustment on my budget or an unhappy downward adjustment on the performance I expect.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Hetzner is good but I’ve found that their connection from EU to US is weak, apparently in Level 3 somewhere.

danpalmer 5y ago

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 5y ago
We failed to build Linode like things internally. We innovate through acquisition. [ source: I was a part of those failures ]
- freedomben 5y ago
  If you don't mind sharing, how long ago was this? And do you know if the attitude is, "this is hard and we blew it, let's by an expert and learn from them" or was it, "we only failed because <excuse> let's buy a starter platform and use it as the foundation?"

angst_ridden 5y ago

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 5y ago
Same, I moved from rackspace to linode and never looked back.
- hughrr 5y ago
  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.
- geuis 5y ago
  Me too. Used a different service more than 15 years ago that provides a ton of resources at an inexpensive price, then it was bought by rack space. Quickly migrated to Linode after that. There aren't any clear alternatives to Linode this time.

Croftengea 5y ago

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/ 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 5y ago
> Akamai has no intention of changing what has made us successful All the buyers say that now. In 2 years, it will change.
- youngtaff 5y ago
  Yeh, why buy them if things aren't going to change…
- Aeolun 5y ago
  I too, read this as ‘farewell, and thanks for all the fish’.
- 1123581321 5y ago
  That sentence isn’t saying nothing will change, as some letters do.

eatonphil 5y ago

Congrats caker and team!

aetherspawn 5y ago

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.

telesilla 5y ago
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.
- freedomben 5y ago
  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.
  - JanSt 5y ago
    I have only great experiences with DO support. Really fast and helpful. I even got some free credits ($50?) at some point for a small inconvenience .
- danuker 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, why did you move to AWS?

endisneigh 5y ago

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!

imwillofficial 5y ago

Did not see this coming. Interesting development.

ritcgab 5y ago

I have moved away from Linode since they started billing VMs in hours. I don't like that cloud bs.

BenjiWiebe 5y ago
They bill VMs per hour for small duration VMs only. If it sticks around for months, they charge you the listed per-month price, which is less than the hourly rate * one month.

_nickwhite 5y ago

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.

freedomben 5y ago
Thanks for sharing regarding Prolexic. That does give me some hope. If Akamai helps polish up some of the rough edges (there aren't very many for the record) that would be great. I've been eagerly anticipating managed databases for a little while, as well as bare metal and some other things. Would be neat if those things happen a little faster now that they have bigger capital behind them.

WesolyKubeczek 5y ago

Oh no. Please no. I hope there’s a competitor to grow in Linode’s place.

ubermonkey 5y ago
You and me both.
christophilus 5y ago
Vultr is my pick.

ubermonkey 5y ago

awww, fuck. I used Slicehost for years, but they got swallowed by Rackspace and became unusable. Linode has been my home since then. I have no positive experiences with small providers who get swallowed by corporate borgs. :(

Klonoar 5y ago

Huh, is this a rare win for Philly tech? (Super open to being corrected here, just always found them interesting to be in Philly since I don't know of many tech co's there)

ferdowsi 5y ago
Comcast is a pretty big deal.
eatonphil 5y ago
dbt is pretty big. No exit event yet but surely it will come soon.

mmaunder 5y ago

Congrats Linode. Been a user since they launched. Even the diehards (like me) have moved a lot to AWS and competitors. Lindode's biz feels stuck in the previous decade, and I think the $900MM purchase price reflects that. Hopefully the founders had a great exit and move on to create new amazing things! Best of luck to the Linode team.

freedomben 5y ago
Interesting, I disagree but appreciate your perspective. AWS and competitors are just getting way too expensive and they're focusing so much on higher-level products. Some people just need a VM and a DB, and don't want to have to higher an expert just to estimate how much it will cost every month and pray they don't have something go viral that uses up a bunch of egress data. I don't see bigger companies moving yet (most of them are building their own infra on top of OpenShift and VMware), but I know a few small companies that are.
- mmaunder 5y ago
  Check out spot instances. An example of how much more competitive and rapidly scaleable aws and friends are vs the old model.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

Maybe this one will be different but usually this kind of acquisition marks the peak of the company and from them on things will go downhill while the acquiring company absorbs them and enterprisifies them.

azinman2 5y ago

Lots of comments on how people now need to move off Linode, but I cannot imagine Akamai bought this to kill it off. It actually makes me happy as Akamai is a very professional company with a lot of networking talent. I hope they level up Linode while keeping the best parts.

christophilus 5y ago
I’m not optimistic, but will keep using Linode until proven otherwise. I can’t think of a single acquisition like this that has ever ended well (from a customer perspective). But there’s a first time for everything, and if anyone can do it it’s Linode.

rossdavidh 5y ago

I have been a Linode customer for most of their existence, and I mostly don't have to think about them. Which is awesome. I sure hope that doesn't change...

freedomben 5y ago

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.

tomxor 5y ago
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.
- everfrustrated 5y ago
  I have had multi million dollar accounts with both Akamai and AWS. Akamai's support was woeful bordering on incompetent. AWS on the other had has been at a very high standard. And no robots.
  - tomxor 5y ago
    > Akamai's support was woeful bordering on incompetent. Isn't that the point? Akamai's weakness and Linode's strength. I've no experience with Akamai at all so i'm interested in your's. However support quality and service quality are not always correlated, especially when support has been highly siloed or outsourced. Obviously they affect each other, but are you able to distinguish them? Would you be able to offer us any insight into the quality of the service they provided separate from the support issues? > I have had multi million dollar accounts [...] AWS on the other had has been at a very high standard. And no robots. I mean, once you are paying millions you are guaranteed a real person. I was talking about the small scale support issues which from what I hear on AWS usually results in automated responses. This is where Linode and AWS definitely differ.

hparadiz 5y ago

Hope Akamai keeps that sweet old city office around. The data center they have in the bank vault is super cool.

shirro 5y ago

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.

freedomben 5y ago
I think you make reasonable points, but I'm hoping that this means Akamai was realizing that they need to get more into self-serve and started looking around for someone to buy (since that's what bigger companies always do these days). I may be that they want to be more like Linode. At least, that's what I'm hoping.

foxhop 5y ago

iam-TJ 5y ago

I've been using Linode since the mid 2000s when Chris Aker, the owner and CEO, provided support on IRC ( OFTC: caker) and the company only had two or three staff. Great to see how he built Linode organically to the scale it has reached. In the context of venture capital and Y-combinator its a good contrasting story on how successful a bootstrapped, patiently built, profitable sustainable business can become when the focus is on excellent (and personal) customer service.

lokl 5y ago

Linode's been solid for me for 15 years, I only moved some projects to Hetzner for better pricing. Linode staff were always very helpful, nothing but positive experiences. Hope their support will remain great.

ksec 5y ago

I have always had question in my mind how are Linode going to keep up with the investment required and competition from DO and Vultr which has more resources backing. It isn't just the cost in infrastructure any more. But all the software services and features from managed DB, K8s and different type of storage. Bare Metal is still coming soon. I also hope this opens up Akamai CDN / DDoS access to consumers rather than Enterprise. Not that it matter as much anymore in the era of Cloudflare. Hopefully this gives enough resources for Linode to continue and grow.

synergy20 5y ago

Using Linode since it started till today, it's stable and great and its support is also good(only used it twice out of ~20 years), but it kind of got overshadowed by digitalocean. All the best to Linode, I will keep using it unless something changed dramatically.

kornhole 5y ago

What a coincidence that Cloudflare today announced their switch from rCaptcha to hCaptcha. Now that I can assure people accessing my service that they won't get Googled, I have a good reason to switch from Linode VPN VPS to CF Argo tunnel.

robbiet480 5y ago
Cloudflare announced the switch from reCAPTCHA to hCaptcha on April 8th, 2020 https://blog.cloudflare.com/moving-from-recaptcha-to-hcaptcha/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/moving-from-recaptcha-to-hcaptch...

pabs3 5y ago

Should this and other recent acquisitions (AMD/Xilinx comes to mind) have been blocked due to antitrust concerns?

nativeit 5y ago
I'm not sure that this specifically would risk breaching any antitrust regulations. There is still plenty of competition in their respective sectors, Akamai and Linode are more or less complimenting one another's services with minimal overlap, there's nothing to suggest that this will result in any meaningful impact to the ability for open market influences to determine their pricing, it doesn't appear to generate any conflicting interests or provide either company with an unfair advantage over their competitors, and it doesn't grant Akamai any outsized leverage in any of its areas of interest. I'm personally of the opinion that a greater diversity of many smaller companies is almost always preferable to homogeneity and the anticompetitive inclinations that come with the vertically integrated corporations that currently plague a good bit of the tech sector, but Akamai + Linode doesn't strike me as the same kind of threat as the larger players. That said, I am a longtime happy Linode customer, and the prospect of anything coming along to dilute their current offerings and practices is concerning. But they've earned the benefit of the doubt, so until I have some specific reason to do otherwise I'll be sticking with them.

didip 5y ago

I have fond memories talking to Linode customer service when I was still a noob sysadmin. They were extremely helpful and polite. I hope that all the employees get good kickbacks from the sale.

slenk 5y ago

I will continue to give them a chance. They have proven in the past to be reliable and even though once, the hardware I was on was physically damaged and a lot of data lost, there support has been rock solid the whole time. Man I suck at typing positive reviews. Happy customer since 2012-03-13

nbzso 5y ago

Oh, snap. I am a longtime Linode customer. Somehow I fell disturbed by this news. Is there a valuable alternative out there? Just in case something happens with pricing or other things. You know what I mean.

ubermonkey 5y ago
I'm going to start looking, for sure. Just assume Akamai will ruin Linode within 24-36 months and plan accordingly.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
I'm with the other guy, a couple years max. In the meantime maybe digital ocean or vultr? I'm not sure how you're using linode but you might give those two a gander.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

God rest your soul Linode, we hardly knew ye.

schmichael 5y ago

I think Linode is the only ad I’ve ever clicked on the internet. Around 2003 they were advertising via static banner ads on sourceforge.net, and I remember the offer being great for the time. Root in a “VM” (it was user mode Linux in those days) for something like $15/mo. I hung out in their IRC channel with caker and the early crew. I remember them talking about unboxing and racking servers and what their DCs were like. Can you imagine just casually chatting with someone who has intimate knowledge of your EC2 machine and its network?! It was a great time. I scored a free Xen VM when they were beta testing their transition and promptly had my first (and last so far!) experience getting a server hacked. Left it running with root ssh logins and a weak password. I migrated to other hosting services before the scandals hit I think. I’m glad to only have great memories and wish them all the best!

LH9000 5y ago

I was a customer back in the early days, congrats caker!

ilaksh 5y ago

Been a Linode customer for around 10 years. Most of the time has been very smooth. Easy to use, and easy on the wallet. Kind of the opposite of the AWS policy of sneaking up, grabbing you by the balls, and yanking. I feel bad for their customer support today. They have kind of trained people to go ahead and ask questions by being responsive. The number of dumb questions no one really knows the answer to will be at an all time high today. Anyway congrats to Aker and other staff, hope they can all retire comfortably or take a long vacation if they want.

geuis 5y ago

Goddamnit. I was already having a bad day. I've run jsonip.com off of linode for over a decade. They've been incredibly reliable as a hosting service. I don't have any experience with Akamai, but I generally find acquisitions are the death of any good service. Goddamn it.

7mpR4nd0 5y ago

If you work at Linode now is time to get the hell out. 250+ employees and barely anything to show for it. You fell behind DO and Vultr and caker took the easy way out. Follow your customers and leave.

shaleenb 5y ago

ShakataGaNai 5y ago

My Linode account has been active since 2010-02-15, so more than a decade now. They've been a very solid option to use all this time. Part of the reason I love them, beyond their great service and competitive pricing... is the fact that I've never had to think about it. Sometimes I may not log into my Linode account for 6 months or more. Do they do a TON more stuff these days? Yes. But my standard bumpkin Linode instance keeps chugging along. Upgrade/replacement to new hardware? They handle it, I get alerts but otherwise I don't need to take action. I'm happy for them that they got bought, because it brings (hopefully) a lot of value to all those people who worked so hard to get to this point in time. However as a customer I worry, of course I worry. Clearly Akamai wants to be the next big cloud, not just a CDN. Linode wants to be that next big cloud too. So it's a great fit. But will that push to The Next Big Thing kill off what made them great for the little guys? Maybe. It'll still be good for their business, just bad for me.

outsomnia 5y ago

Linode netblocks are blackholed here, because of the endless abuse and spam from them.

todotask 5y ago

Linode was my first forayed to VPS for nearly 2 years and we move to UpCloud which has Singapore region and it claimed to offer server redundancy without additional costs.

sam0x17 5y ago

Happy linode user since 2004 when I was 13 years old. Has always been my go-to for just having a linux vps running somewhere in the cloud. Really can't complain hope the acquisition doesn't change anything about how they operate.

anyfactor 5y ago

TLDR: $900 Million

arrty88 5y ago

Congrats Linode. Been a happy customer for more than a decade. Cheers

zerop 5y ago

I have used Linode boxes and like the CPU performance I got. Didn’t have unexpected infra issues and never had to bother to setup HA.

codeisawesome 5y ago

Linode IRC folks taught me a bunch of linux many years ago on their channel. I was astounded by their patience towards my complete stupidity. Thank you Linode team & users, owe you a fair bit!

unixhero 5y ago

Linode holds a special place in my experience. I switched to DigitalOcean for better sbapshotting and even cheaper cheap vps'es, but I only have very good memories of Linode.

avodonosov 5y ago

Bad news. I have great experience with Linode, but had horrible experience with Akamai. Will need to change hosting soon, most likely.

nfoz 5y ago

So, what are some decent alternatives?

anovikov 5y ago

As usual, a company provided good service at low price, was people friendly, supported educational and open source uses and... got acquired by an old, high friction, bloated, expensive predatory monster.

sipos 5y ago

Really hope Akamai don't mess up Linode - I'm a long time happy customer of theirs. I hope this is positive for their employees, who made it what it is, too. I don't have a lot of use for it, but I think their load balancer could be better, so hopefully this will happen now.

seodisparate 5y ago

Been using Linode since 2019. Service worked as expected (worked well), and I hope that won't change after this. If I had to move, I'd have to go through the pain of setting up my website(s) again, but at least I have backups, so it's just a matter of time spent getting set up again..

pqdbr 5y ago

Longtime customer here (10+ years). I can only hope that now they finally set up a datacenter in Brazil!

sha016 5y ago

Love Linode, been a customer for years. The only support ticket I had to file was because of a copy/paste error on my end and support helped me resolve it quickly and effortlessly. Great performance and cost. Was really a no brainer when AWS wouldn't stop billing me for a service I shut down and I couldn't get through to a human.

webmobdev 5y ago

Damn it. Another small business swallowed. And now we'll have to deal with rising costs and awful customer support ...