
Cloudflare launches app development platform, announces $100M investment fund - janober
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/cloudflare-launches-cloudflare-apps-platform-and-100m-fund-from-investors
======
zackbloom
I'm a lead engineer on the Cloudflare Apps team and I'd love to answer any
questions. Cloudflare has been working on building apps into our platform for
over six years, and I've personally been working on this codebase for over
three (1200 days exactly today in fact).

The initial goal of Apps is to make it possible for everyone to use all the
tools technical people find and use on Github and npm everyday. Our long term
goal is to make it possible for developers to make a living building tools
which make the web better. As an engineer myself, the moment I will personally
enjoy the most is when a developer makes $1MM on the store meaning it has
truly changed their lives. That will be when this experiment is proven a
success and we can't wait!

UPDATE: I found a visualization that Teffen Ellis on our team made of every
commit throughout the history of the project:
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6EsMIhQjoQYT2pmS05hU1RuUTQ...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6EsMIhQjoQYT2pmS05hU1RuUTQ/view)

~~~
mwfj
Hi Zack,

This headline made me think that Cloudflare had finally done what I first
assumed Akamai did back in the noughties, before I learned they didn't really
have magic tech. :/

Anyway: here's some indirect feedback. It doesn't really apply to your project
(which I'm sure will be super useful to other people). I would expect
Cloudflare to take the lead in... let's call it widely-distributed-
computation. All I want is my code running on your nodes all around the world
with an end-to-end ping that is less than 10 ms to the average client.

~~~
jgrahamc
_All I want is my code running on your nodes all around the world with an end-
to-end ping that is less than 10 ms to the average client._

Interesting idea. jgc AT cloudflare to tell me more.

~~~
dsl
Akamai Edge Compute is what they are asking for.

As someone who tried building this for the unwashed masses, wait until you
have something along the lines of Google Spanner. Developers see amazing gains
from edge compute because ZOMG LATENCY, then actually flesh out their apps and
start making uncached database calls back to AWS anyway.

EDIT: Yes they lack pricing transparency. Akamai is expensive. As I pointed
out, in real world experience less than 5% of the developers I talked to
actually could lower response times by moving closer to the client. It's
something everyone thinks they need, but the devil is in the implementation
details. Akamai hand holds you a lot for your money.

~~~
johansch
Akamai Edge Compute appears to be a "talk to us for pricing, and we'll then
attempt to extract the maximum amount of money that we think you'll be able to
pay" kind of deal. No thanks.

~~~
dsl
If you really want this now, shoot me an email (in profile) and i'll hook you
up.

~~~
kentonv
But... also email JGC... or me. ;)

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kentt
I'd be very wary about investing my time and resources on a platform with such
a corrupt CEO. Just a few months ago he was blatantly lying* about the massive
security issues they were having.

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13721644](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13721644)

~~~
j_s
Most likely relying on second-hand info that was just wrong. I doubt he based
that post entirely on searching the caches himself. That whole incident was a
mess though, tying up a lot of peoples' time who didn't work for CloudFlare.
Centralization of services is always painful when things go wrong, and that
may be a reason to avoid CloudFlare.

The only other beef I can think of against CloudFlare is how they play both
sides of the DDoS game, hosting the sites selling them (free speech!) and
charging the victims for protection.

PS. CloudFlare does deserve some flak / second thoughts for the whole
Cloudbleed thing, but I don't think your response is quite on target.

~~~
MichaelGG
The moment CF stops hosting DDoS websites is the moment the censorship will
burst wide open. Besides CP (which is too hot to try to defend), as soon as
they start judging which businesses are allowed to host then they'll be forced
to restrict their offerings all around.

What if a booter site advertises itself and says "you must confirm you have
legal authority to run an attack test against this site"? What if it's legal
in <some jurisdiction>?

CF should only take down sites after getting a direct court order to stop
services (even then jurisdiction is an issue).

~~~
j_s
I mentioned it as a conflict of interest to be aware of. I personally use
CloudFlare for DNS for most of my personal sites.

Your comment seems to fairly accurately reflect CloudFlare's position:
_Thoughts on Abuse_ | [https://blog.cloudflare.com/thoughts-on-
abuse/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/thoughts-on-abuse/) (2012)

Here is a semi-recent take from one of their more vocal opponents: _Spreading
the DDoS Disease and Selling the Cure_ |
[https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/10/spreading-the-ddos-
disea...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/10/spreading-the-ddos-disease-and-
selling-the-cure/) (2016)

Here is how it works out in practice for a few fellow HN-er's: _The New
Normal: 200-400 Gbps DDoS Attacks_ |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7242377](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7242377)
(2014)

------
Kudos
I guess this explains the Cloudflare CEO's sudden uptick in anti-AWS tweets.

[https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/877697707464302593](https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/877697707464302593)

[https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/876951966521348096](https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/876951966521348096)

[https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/873041178718908416](https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/873041178718908416)

[https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/870174216104034304](https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/870174216104034304)

~~~
MichaelGG
How? Cloudflare doesn't host (and makes a big deal of that point); the actual
app backends need to be hosted somewhere. They partner with Google
(connectivity between CF and GCP), which is in the same business as AWS. A
more likely reason is AWS's own anti-DDoS offering, AWS Shield.

~~~
tyingq
Maybe CF is a little tired of being the workaround for AWS egress charges too.

~~~
MichaelGG
Again, why would that apply just to AWS? Being a "workaround" would apply to
anyone offloading bandwidth - Azure, GCP, and AWS have similar pricing.

~~~
tyingq
It applies mostly to AWS because of their respective marketshare in that
space. Even more so specifically considering the S3 service.

------
jgrahamc
Apps announcement: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-
apps-2/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-apps-2/)

Fund announcement: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/developer-
fund/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/developer-fund/)

------
tyingq
_" At its core a Cloudflare app is set of JavaScript and/or CSS files which
run on a website, and an install.json file which instructs tools like
Cloudflare Apps how to use those files."_

Sounds like all of your code executes in the browser then, somewhat like
tampermonkey user scripts or basic browser web extensions.

~~~
e12e
So, it's a "platform" for MITM as edge-includes in the CDN?

~~~
tyingq
That's fairly accurate, as far as I can tell.

Your "code" looks VERY similar to the code you would write for a chrome web
extension. The delivery mechanism for the code is the MITM capability...looks
very much like edge-side-includes.

They have a sample app here:
[https://github.com/CloudflareApps/CornerRibbon](https://github.com/CloudflareApps/CornerRibbon)

------
pfraze
This is the result of Cloudflare's eager.io acquisition. You might remember
eager from some of their really awesome blog posts on the histories of various
techs [1][2].

1 [https://eager.io/blog/a-brief-history-of-weird-scripting-
lan...](https://eager.io/blog/a-brief-history-of-weird-scripting-languages/)

2 [https://eager.io/blog/history-of-email/](https://eager.io/blog/history-of-
email/)

~~~
pfraze
Now that I've said something nice, I'm going to follow that up with a big F U
to this app:
[https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/noadblock](https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/noadblock)

EDIT: a little pre-debate warmup for anybody that wants to get into it. Point
1: Users have the right to block. Counter-point: Content provider have the
right to deny access. Point 2: Ads are bad for users. Counter-point: there is
none, ads are bad for users.

~~~
matt4077
Actual counter-point: blocking all ads is shortsighted. As more and more
people do it, the sites you are currently blocking from showing you ads will
have to switch to a paid model, with many probably failing.

Only a select few news sources will survive. Local news in non-metropolitan
areas will be even worse than it is now. People will start consuming news
exclusively from the one or two (maximum) sources they pay for, whereas now
they probably read at least one article from 50+ sources every month.

Elections will happen, but very few people will actually have enough
information. All political oversight will seize, because actual behaviour is
no longer tied to re-election. But, at least, most politicians will have very
nice names.

Alternative scenario: smart blocking: start with allowing all, then blacklist
individual ads based on the publisher, content/behaviour of the ad, and
reputation of the ad network. That would incentive ads to actually get better.

~~~
pfraze
I'm glad you replied; I'm interested in this debate.

I agree that content monetization is an important problem that ought to be
solved in order to maintain quality of information.

I disagree that current advertising models have elevated the quality of
content. Fake news websites (literally - a made-up .coms that have BS stories,
the equivalent of tabloids) exist specifically because advertising monetizes
clicks/eyeballs, and so clickbait is the optimal strategy.

I disagree that moderating ads will produce better ads, because I believe ads
run counter to a well-functioning information system. An example: HN is an
information system that's designed to put high quality links in front of the
user. A paid placement makes it possible to skip the votes mechanism, thereby
skipping the system's regulatory structure. If your link deserves to be at the
top, it will get there the same way all other links do.

I disagree that advertising or paywall are the only two options, though I will
concede those are the only two that have happened so far.

------
djhworld
Can anyone explain what this would be used for?

From the looks of the demo it looks like you instruct CloudFlare to inject
some code, e.g. embedded google maps into a website at a location in the DOM.

How is that different from the website owner from just putting an embed link
in their website and updating the site?

Or is the idea you can add/remove these things dynamically through the
CloudFlare web interface without having to touch any code?

~~~
zackbloom
You can get a good idea of how it works by clicking through some previews, you
don't have to actually use Cloudflare yet to preview apps on a site:
[https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/](https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/)

------
shimon_e
What is cloudflare's endgame for investors? For some reason I don't think
there are enough enterprise customers for cloudflare to become a multi billion
dollar company.

I love cloudflare and am a happy customer but I'm really interested to know
what these investors are thinking before they put up 100s of millions in
investment.

~~~
jgrahamc
_What is cloudflare 's endgame for investors? For some reason I don't think
there are enough enterprise customers for cloudflare to become a multi billion
dollar company._

Why not?

Also, Cloudflare has literally millions of web sites, APIs, applications using
it. We are not limited to enterprise deals at all.

~~~
shimon_e
Actually, I just crunched some numbers and its not unreasonable to estimate
that you are currently doing 8 figure sums monthly.

Maybe it's not a bad idea to invest in cloudflare :)

------
bearjaws
"Put a google map in a browser with no code"

Because copy pasting the markup / js was so difficult?

~~~
kentonv
Imagine you are a dentist who has a web site for your practice.

~~~
MichaelGG
Yeah, don't underestimate how annoying stuff is for most people. Even
partially technically-aware users are right to prefer some easy click-n-add
system vs getting into details themselves. Though I'm not sure how much those
users intersect with Cloudflare users...

------
phmagic
A platform that pays developers to use it is no platform at all.

Yes, there's exceptions to every rule. But I have yet to see this strategy of
a platform fund ever succeed.

Better to build (or tap into) a captive audience and then sell that to
developers.

~~~
thephyber
You almost seem like you're trolling, but to clarify in case anyone else
doesn't get it:

This is a low friction app ecosystem with 70/30 rev share[1] for what
CloudFlare claims is 6m+ websites. Also, their VC are also willing to back
companies in their app ecosystem, too.

[1] [https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/developer/docs/writing-
your-...](https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/developer/docs/writing-your-
app/charging-for-your-app)

~~~
phmagic
Thanks for clarifying.

I guess my main confusion is that I don't understand the audience who would
benefit from these apps. I imagine one member of the audience is someone who
runs a popular blog and want to add a widget but don't want to copy and paste
code.

A quick search on Google would solve my problem, or I'd hire someone on eLance
to make the change for me instead of paying a monthly subscription for an app.

------
mariust
I think it would be nice to have a couple of examples of the type of websites
hosted by cloudflare so that as a developer I can get a sense of what apps
would work best.

Further more ... if it's an app store (like) concept why does it not describe
the way developers can make income just from creating an app not an app and a
connected service that would require a server setup, I mean describe the
revenue model and the cut that cloudflare would get and us as developers will
get in the end.

Thank you

------
thisisit
Am I missing something here? I don't see any pricing model which will
encourage people to post their "apps" here.

