Having worked for a successful(ish) database vendor, I can say that user stupidity (ignorance) is a major factor in database software success.
Literally no users, and almost no employees at the vendors, I would bet (if my experience is not unique) have any idea of the qualities of the software they use/peddle, its semantics or guarantees, or its performance characteristics or how to use it correctly.
This makes the technology secondary; what is most important is how well you carve out mindshare. Whether that is even primarily down to "good" marketing is something I doubt. In the modern saturated database market, it is entirely unclear to me how you win sufficient mindshare and trust to obtain a wide enough (paying) userbase.
I have no idea if RethinkDB was "good" or not, as I did not take the time to investigate; I have little interest in "document stores". It actually seemed to me they had some pretty solid engineering foundations; the kind of thing that the industry should value highly, but due to poor information is unable to price into their purchasing decision, and as a result is missing in many modern (especially OSS) database offerings today.
Literally no users, and almost no employees at the vendors, I would bet (if my experience is not unique) have any idea of the qualities of the software they use/peddle, its semantics or guarantees, or its performance characteristics or how to use it correctly.
This makes the technology secondary; what is most important is how well you carve out mindshare. Whether that is even primarily down to "good" marketing is something I doubt. In the modern saturated database market, it is entirely unclear to me how you win sufficient mindshare and trust to obtain a wide enough (paying) userbase.
I have no idea if RethinkDB was "good" or not, as I did not take the time to investigate; I have little interest in "document stores". It actually seemed to me they had some pretty solid engineering foundations; the kind of thing that the industry should value highly, but due to poor information is unable to price into their purchasing decision, and as a result is missing in many modern (especially OSS) database offerings today.