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I guess database as a service is not as bullet proof of a business model as one thinks, same sort of acquisition happened with Neon.

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I think the problem is it's too risky to utilise a "new" database today that isn't available as a managed option on many platforms.

Neon is just Postgres for the most part -- sure if they shut down it'd be a pain to migrate but you'd mostly be fine just swapping to AWS RDS/Aurora or the plethora of other Postgres providers.

Buying into things like Gel or now defunct RethinkDB mean if the primary company went under you're stuck with a dead DB engine and potentially no managed hosting options.

Gel is Postgres.

I mean sorta? It's value add over something like Aurora or RDS has been it's SDL and EdgeQL layer which makes it a hard pill to swallow not knowing if it's going to go under and you're stuck trying to maintain that yourself or migrate off of it.

Not sorta, quite literally. You can start a Postgres instance and point gel-server at it.

By default, it does start a managed Postgres because that's more convenient, but you can point it to Aurora or RDS or any other pg deployment.

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