alt Hacker NewsOh damn, I didn't know this!
I've used their services for ages and even got to briefly meet the founders once in Wellington who gave a talk on Erlang.
Ah well, while it sucks that the good times may be over, I'm glad the founders got their exit :)
Replies
duggan • 12/09/2024
Yeah I was a fan, had every domain with them that I could! But once they were acquired their .org renewal prices just did not make sense any more, and they were missing some functionality that I thought was crucial and didn't seem inclined to add it (can't remember what it was now, maybe MFA).
Domains are like car insurance – there's no reward for loyalty, so makes sense to shop around come renewal time.
> I'm glad the founders got their exit
I'm not.
I mean, I am happy for them but this concept of growing a business to an exit is not going well for society as a whole (at least the exits that are in my areas of interest, so I assume it extrapolates to all exits).
Every single business that gets bought out gets instantly enshittified in one way or another, always to the detriment of the customer. Depending on how entrenched it was it takes a different amount of time for people to move on as the new shareholders extract its economical value, but it almost always destroys societal value in the process as the company becomes a shadow of its former self (and hopefully dies, leaving way for the cycle to start again).
I wish there was a way for founders to get rich without the need for an exit, so the business could keep running... but I guess ruthless enshittification is the only way to get rich?
Apologies for the tangent, this is something that's been bouncing in my mind for a while...