That's one of the first lessons old schoolers learnt about web hosting when the internet boom began and busted - The oldest web hosts are the most reliable, but

That's one of the first lessons old schoolers learnt about web hosting when the internet boom began and busted - The oldest web hosts are the most reliable, but always keep an eye for change of ownership. Rackspace, Pair, Slicehost, Linode etc. were some of the really popular and good ones in the small and medium segment (Rackspace, ofcourse targeted enterprises) during this era but now ALL of them have been bought by someone else for their brand value. And yet, the new buyers didn't understand or seem concerned about the values behind the brand that made it so respected, and so all these brands have suffered under new management (I guess it is too early to speak about Linode yet, as Akamai just bought them).