Neon and Databricks

This morning I got an email from Neon - A really cool database company I’ve been using for a while, and wrote about recently ↗, saying they are being purchased by Databricks ↗.

I don’t particularly have a problem with Databricks ↗ specifically, but it seems that about 90% of the time when an acquisition like this happens, it inevitably either disappears in to the main product, which is worse for the use cases Neon was fantastic for, or it will just slowly move to neglect mode and then fade out over time.

Of course, Neon says that won’t happen. They all promise that, but it’s not in their control. I know the founders saying that mean well, and have the intention of doing so, but the bigger company will always exert what they want at some point. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but that time always comes.

I hope they are able to hang on and maintain their independence, just with more resources where they need them. It does occassionally happen.