I fail to see how this addresses the idea that Balanced was "promoting their brand." Was anyone questioning the engineering talent at either company?

Stripe wrote this blog post to promote their brand, Balanced let potential customers know that they have similar functionality. Both companies, in my opinion, offer extremely high-quality services (I have used both in production) and have great engineering talent. I do not think we should knock either company for "promoting their brand", it's important that potential customers (read: HN users) are able to make informed decisions. I think zende, pc, and the original blog post all do a good job of articulating the features available through their respective APIs.