I think that the assumption is more along the lines that the cost of losing the Linode brand is lower than the value that can be built from brand awareness arou

I think that the assumption is more along the lines that the cost of losing the Linode brand is lower than the value that can be built from brand awareness around Akamai. As long as they don't change the nature of the service, they might not be wrong - people are unlikely to switch providers over just a name change, and people looking into Linode probably won't care that it's now called something else. Conversely, lower information decision makers might be drawn into an ecosystem that is advertising a degree of consistency through unified branding.