Cloudflare doesn’t own anything significant in the form of data centers. Having small rented footprints at IXPs across the globe is not an asset, it’s just a cost. I’m not downplaying the difficulty of getting it setup but there is no intrinsic value in having it if demand for their product collapses.
I don't understand this point. If there's a risk that demand will collapse isn't it better not to own the data centers? By renting CF can reduce their costs quickly in the face of falling demand. That's a feature.
An AWS, Azure, or Google DDoS protection product could eat Cloudflare’s market in a hot minute. Cloudflare can’t escape being a “feature” of a cloud provider.
This is also true of any other software company though - at some point a bigger company might offer whatever product as a feature. It's just a risk of building a software company - what we build is largely straightforward to copy. That doesn't mean there's no value in software as a product though.
> there's a risk that demand will collapse isn't it better not to own the data centers? By renting CF can reduce their costs quickly in the face of falling demand. That's a feature.
But it’s not an asset. Do you know what an asset is?
I don't understand this point. If there's a risk that demand will collapse isn't it better not to own the data centers? By renting CF can reduce their costs quickly in the face of falling demand. That's a feature.
An AWS, Azure, or Google DDoS protection product could eat Cloudflare’s market in a hot minute. Cloudflare can’t escape being a “feature” of a cloud provider.
This is also true of any other software company though - at some point a bigger company might offer whatever product as a feature. It's just a risk of building a software company - what we build is largely straightforward to copy. That doesn't mean there's no value in software as a product though.