> We were relying on a lot of free technology. We’re gonna continue to have free hosting. Google gave us $100,000 grant in credits. So, that was gonna be our largest non people expense. So, that’s definitely reducing a lot of risk.<p>Interesting. Why would Google do this? Is it a bet that Hackernoon will get big enough that having them locked in to Firebase will pay off in the end?
I don't like the medium paywall stuff, but I'm finding myself annoyed by Hackernoon's "Medium is bad" positioning.<p>I posted a few things on Medium, and got contacted by Hackernoon (and some other publications) about putting them on their "publication", which I allowed (and later removed). So presumably this happened a lot and lots of Hackernoon pieces came from Hackernoon contacting people using Medium, and those people putting things into a Medium publication called Hackernoon, via Medium.<p>So some business model drama happened and now neither party is happy, and Hackernoon is moving away and that seems fine.<p>I don't think they're wrong to move off Medium, but their positioning - that Medium is a big bad preventing publications and authors from moving - seems like bullshit. There is clearly a muddled symbiotic relationship here, neither is wrong, neither is right.<p>Tl;dr This is giving me a very poor opinion of Hackernoon.