Great piece — the day-in-tour of Hetzner’s Falkenstein data center shows how efficient, green, and well-engineered their operations are, with clever free‑cooling, strong security, and very low energy waste.
I wish that they'll just keep on running a good profitable business without going public, or getting bought by Amazon, or otherwise shifting focus to providing shareholder value.
This. I am a happy paying customer. Recommend them to my clients whenever it makes sense (more often than not). And hope they just keep running like they do as profitable business, like you said.
Why in the world would one want a company like this to go public? They are a very stable, established and profitable private entity. Based on what Hetzner is doing right now, it seems like the current way of operating that is intended by the leadership is closely aligned with what their customers want. This is often the first thing that goes out the window once a company becomes public
Yes I agree, we need more public companies in Europe.
Private companies are inherently less social since they don’t allow ordinary people to participate in growth.
In this sense, they’re selfish.
PS: yes I know that there are also downsides to public companies. But looking at the trade-offs I prefer that success can be shared as broadly as possible.
The comparison with OVH is a good one. For some reason OVH has much worse PUE, self-reporting 1.24 vs. Hetzner's 1.11. Operating costs are basically just electricity for these places, so their margins are that much worse.
For further comparison, Google at a similar latitude in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, claims 1.08.
"Mittelstand" in Germany seems to be roughly: below 500 Employees, below 50 Million € turnover. Hetzner makes more like 400 Million € turnover but with 300 Employees. So it's technically above it but they are propably a very tight margin buisness. As such i'd say yes.
Great piece — the day-in-tour of Hetzner’s Falkenstein data center shows how efficient, green, and well-engineered their operations are, with clever free‑cooling, strong security, and very low energy waste.
Had a server in that DC for a few years until recently (no knock on Hetzner they where excellent, just didn't need it any more).
Robot is a brutally functional tool but it does function (well) and had zero issues.
Location of Hetzner's Falkenstein data centre, for the curious:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/606528332#map=13/50.46220/...
Video didn't display for me even after turning off content blockers, here's the url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIjdKIMQh4s
works with Firefox + uBlock Origin + canvas blocker
Hetzner is awesome.
I wish they would go public.
Would be very interesting to see how their business is doing compared to IONOS and OVH.
We need more public cloud companies in Europe.
> I wish they would go public.
I wish that they'll just keep on running a good profitable business without going public, or getting bought by Amazon, or otherwise shifting focus to providing shareholder value.
This. I am a happy paying customer. Recommend them to my clients whenever it makes sense (more often than not). And hope they just keep running like they do as profitable business, like you said.
Why in the world would one want a company like this to go public? They are a very stable, established and profitable private entity. Based on what Hetzner is doing right now, it seems like the current way of operating that is intended by the leadership is closely aligned with what their customers want. This is often the first thing that goes out the window once a company becomes public
Why would you want a company you like to go public? To keep chasing profits to the detriment of everything else?
> I wish they would go public.
If they go public they will be bought by foreign private equity.
Yes I agree, we need more public companies in Europe.
Private companies are inherently less social since they don’t allow ordinary people to participate in growth.
In this sense, they’re selfish.
PS: yes I know that there are also downsides to public companies. But looking at the trade-offs I prefer that success can be shared as broadly as possible.
The comparison with OVH is a good one. For some reason OVH has much worse PUE, self-reporting 1.24 vs. Hetzner's 1.11. Operating costs are basically just electricity for these places, so their margins are that much worse.
For further comparison, Google at a similar latitude in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, claims 1.08.
Damn Americans, can't think of anything other than "I wish I could make a buck off this, idgaf if it gets destroyed in the process".
Do tech companies like Hetzner count as mittelstands?
"Mittelstand" in Germany seems to be roughly: below 500 Employees, below 50 Million € turnover. Hetzner makes more like 400 Million € turnover but with 300 Employees. So it's technically above it but they are propably a very tight margin buisness. As such i'd say yes.
Ah, Igors Lab. Your one stop shop for semi-trustworthy technical insights and misogyny packaged in boomer humor!
Maybe I will regret this, but... care to elaborate?
Example of his less than stellar reputation: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/18mknvh/igor_... or the longer explanation by roman der8auer about that situation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHNXFgSonWI
and to hear his creepy boomer takes you just have to watch a video of his in german and listen to his "jokes"