While Linode is very well known amongst a set of developers the cross-section of customers that overlap between Linode and Akamai is very tiny.
This acquisition was about selling a product to existing Akamai customers so branding it as an Akamai offering allows them to present this as an enterprise ready solution that their customers can trust immediately.
Akamai did $3.6B in trailing twelve month revenue, and even backing out $200MM (being generous here for Linode) that is $3.4B of revenue.
The bigger play for them is to mark up this as a high gross margin offering to their existing CDN customers where they need a bit of compute power to pair with their CDN offering.
Limelight Networks (throw back alert) was doing the same thing back in the day and they approached us (DigitalOcean) in 2012 looking to potentially partner with us so that we can use our software to build an internal white labelled cloud for them that they could resell to their customers.
This is seen as more of a brand extension through product acquisition under the Akamai umbrella rather than something like Microsoft buying Github where that is a service that is known globally by pretty much every developer and what they wanted was the brand and developer clout.
Here there was no real interest from Akamai in the brand, but simply in a robust enough product that they could resell into their existing customer base.
I have nothing much to add except that Akamai paid 900 million for linode, so 200m was a low guess. But linode was debt free and profitable unlike their competitors.
Just yesterday I watched an MJD video on YouTube (mostly retro PC and OS videos) and he always mentions being sponsored by Linode. Since I like MJD, I was inclined to like Linode by association. Bummer it's going away.
I have a strong suspicion that the sponsorships will be going away now.
Akamai killed the enthusiast-run Linode to instead create executive-run cloud computing services. That is what the difference is, and why these news are so worrisome for enthusiasts.
I get it for the Linode guys. Sell now- server hosting is an arms race against giants. I don’t wanna compete against AWS! I use AWS! Maybe I shouldn’t be? Maybe I should run my software on organic Linux-farmers open source electronic fields that run on hydroelectric power. They can get fiber and backup power too.
Stop using AWS! Linode was great for me up untill they got bought and now they have been doing abrupt "maintenance" work and stuff that Linode never did. But AWS is killing the world and so does companies like Akamai. We need to use pure VPS services and keep moving and not take any shit. I'm sick of it. VPS services should be state-run/owned to end this nonsense.
