Just as an aside, I thought that was an exceptionally well-written product announcement, or press release, or whatever you'd call it. It was long, but I didn't mind reading the whole thing. It answered all the basic questions about why I should use it, how they plan to make money, and with enough technical detail that I understood essentially how it works. It was very much the opposite of the marketing material you get from most big corporations. I'm saving the page as a PDF as a good example if and when I need to write a product announcement.
I had the same reaction. As I was reading the article, I started asking myself "Hold on, what's in it for you? You're still a private company. How are you going to make money?". I then reached the "Ok, Sure, But You’re Still a Profit-Seeking Company" section. It's as if the article was reading my mind.
Every free product comes with a catch. When this catch is not clearly explained by the company, I always feel it's because the reason is too "shady" to acknowledge publicly (like Gmail and Facebook gathering data for advertisers). I'm probably naive to believe the reason here is vastly different, but the tone and style of this article puts Cloudflare closer to Apple than to Google privacy-wise in my eyes.
The choice to omit any sort of sign-in or account feature for the app is also a very stark difference. Even most apps with the stated goal of improving your privacy requires some sort of account.
While it's true that if Cloudflare was evil, they could fairly likely identify you from metadata, that's a lot more complex and a lot more error-prone than having you sign in.
I am curious though if this will extend to their premium Warp+ offering though, as presumably they need to identify a paying customer. Perhaps if they're entirely built off of IAP on whatever platforms their clients are on, they can avoid this problem entirely?
We'll have to take payment for the paid feature, obviously, but plan to use the Apple and Google payment systems for that. I'm not an expert on the nitty gritty of that, but I don't think that gives us access to any of your personal details. We've always thought of personally identifiable information as a toxic asset and something we try to minimize collecting whenever we can.
One of the first (and most important) lessons I learned from @eastdakota when starting at Cloudflare ~4 years ago was how to write a product announcement.
Nobody does it quite like him, though @jgrahamc is great too, and I try to encourage my team to follow the lead here as much as possible.
Thank you. That's very nice of you to say. It was a team effort because we were working until the last minute to figure out exactly what we were going to be able to announce today. Glad it came across as clear.
Overall I'd agree, though they nearly lost me at the start:
> on “April Fools” a handful of elite tech companies decide to waste the time of literally billions of people with juvenile jokes that only they find funny.
I think a lot of the backlash the tech industry is facing is due to its unwillingness to grow up. So, yes, perhaps I'm a humbug in tech circles, but it's only because I've been outside of the Silicon Valley bubble and listened to how the tech industry is perceived. It's not good. And the April Fools foolishness is a very stark illustration of that.
> I think a lot of the backlash the tech industry is facing is due to its unwillingness to grow up.
I'd say the backlash is due to unaccountability, privacy erosion, and income inequality.
April Fools gimmicks are barely a blip on the radar compared to the above. At best they provide a target to focus the above ire on, but that's confusing the issue.
I've been fortunate enough to earn degrees in English (BA), Computer Science (minor), Law (JD), and Business (MBA). The one that serves me the most regularly in my role as CEO of Cloudflare is my English degree. Learning to communicate is so critical to success in your field, regardless of the field.
She did freelance work while getting her degree (mostly friends/family small business promos, article, press-releases) and received a ton of positive feedback that she was able to use.
