This sounds like a great, very valuable service. However, as far as I can tell, this service is not fundamentally different than running a MySQL server with replication. Nothing indicates it's "scalable" in the way that say, Cassandra, is. Replication is a perfectly adequate system for many people but it has its limits, especially for a write-heavy workload.

If FathomDB is more sophisticated than a highly managed MySQL-as-a-service I would be very curious to know.

That said, many of the complaints about scaling out MySQL stem from the painful management overhead of running a replicated setup, managing backups, etc. If FathomDB can vastly reduce the cost and difficulty of doing these things it may move MySQL a long ways towards addressing many of the reasons people are moving away from it.

"The end of NoSQL" is just another piece of claptrap that I've seen recently on this and related topics. I would agree that "AltDB" might be a better term simply because it's less inflammatory and better expresses the goals of many of the diverse projects now lumped under "NoSQL".