Ask HN: What Happened to Digital Ocean?
&gt;Not too long ago DO was touted as the #2 cloud behind Amazon [1]<p>Is there a time of where that was said in the podcast. I could bet money at no point in time was DO no.2 in Hosting or Cloud Hosting in revenue, profits or customers. They might have been the case if you count instances &#x2F; droplet or Domain name, but both of these are quite irrelevant.<p>They have growing pains, as with <i>ALL</i> companies does, and they reach a point where growth has slow down due to market interest and competition. Not only has Linode becomes better and more competitive thanks to DO, there are also new comers into what I considered as Middle Class Cloud Hosting such as UpCloud and Vultr. You also have Giants ( in their own right ) such as OVH and Hetzner.<p>&gt;Its not like the market for their stuff is that small, Azure and even GCP have proved that.<p>No one gets fired for buying IBM. That mentality is the same for Intel ( vs AMD ), using SalesForce rather than other CRM or ERP, and across <i>All</i> industries, from toilet paper roll, food, water, cleaning solution etc. Big Enterprise wants to works with other Big Enterprise. If you have ever sit in the chair of the purchasing, or Supply Chain director you will understand the risk of working with smaller companies is far too great. DO aims at people who are willing to take that risk, SME or startups. And that market is fundamentally different to Azure and GCP serves.<p>So your answer aren&#x27;t really technical, but more on the economical and business side of things.