"It was also made clear by Toni that Automattic would maintain Gravatar as a separate brand and continue its evolution (instead of just absorbing it into WordPress)."

I just looked at getting a gravatar for my Github account. I didn't do it because the signup page told me I was actually signing up for a Wordpress account and I needed to choose a handle I could never ever change. I wanted an icon, not to make an irrevocable decision and sign up for some unrelated site, so I gave up. The author writes "Gravatar was a feature"; I felt the same way: I was left wondering why GitHub would outsource a feature for another company to confuse.

Lots of nice history here, though. Great blog post.