4 ms·

Smells like a puff-piece

skj 11y ago
A puff piece would be if some tech reporter wrote about the wonders of GCP. This is the Spotify team, and they've clearly put their money where their mouth is by actually making the move.
- wcummings 11y ago
  Marketing blog spam is the new puff piece.
  - vgt 11y ago
    Would you prefer testaments like these from Spotify engineers? https://twitter.com/plamere/status/702168809445134336 https://twitter.com/plamere/status/702168809445134336 https://twitter.com/plamere/status/702169733454495745 https://twitter.com/plamere/status/702169733454495745 https://twitter.com/mpjme/status/702167231623516160 https://twitter.com/mpjme/status/702167231623516160
    - shockzzz 11y ago
      Kind of. We all know that companies cut deals with providers in exchange for blog posts, tweets, and other sorts of promotion. I'm always wary of posts like these, especially when they lack detail or awareness of competing products.
      - vgt 11y ago
        I think if Spotify dressed down Google Cloud Platform competition, no matter the merit, there would be many more complaints (ex. see comments on this technical post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11029032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11029032). Spotify did say that they really enjoy specific aspects of Google Cloud Platform, through their own engineering blog. Spotify engineers have also been independently vocal on Twitter. Netflix has been very similarly vocal of their support of AWS. I'd love to hear your thoughts on a better mindshare model, perhaps we can all learn to do things a bit better.
        shockzzz 11y ago
        Right, I don't think they have to directly attack anyone. It's just a matter of tradeoffs - here are the things the Google Cloud gets us, here's a specific example that hones it in, and here's why that's critical to our business. At the moment, the blog post just says, "Yay we moved to the cloud" and threw out some marketing buzzwords. It should be beyond a shadow of doubt that they got a lower price as a result. That's ok - now give us the details! On a product level, what made Google Cloud so compelling that you were willing to move your entire infrastructure to it? That question really wasn't answered, and is really the biggest thing, as a customer, I'd want. Right now, I'd have to call Spotify as a reference in order to do to get that answer, which again allows them bring the price lower. Not necessarily democratize the information.
        nrh 11y ago
        Spotifier here. Frankly, price is not the biggest factor in a decision like this. If we were going for the lowest cost cloud option, it probably wouldn't be either AWS or Google - there are other providers who are hungrier for business that would be willing to do deep cuts at our scale. The way we think about this is that there are basically two classes of cloud services: commodities and differentiated services. Commodities are storage/network/compute, and the big players are going to compete on price and quality on these for the foreseeable future (as with most commodities). The differentiated services stuff is a bit more interesting. Different players have different strengths and weaknesses here - AWS has way, way better capabilities when it comes to administration and access control and identity management, for example (which is actually pretty important when trying to do this in a large org). The places were Google is strong (data platform) are the places that are most important for us as a business. Compelling: dataproc+gcs, bigquery, pubsub, dataflow Made it safe: high-enough quality, cheap enough. What more would you like to know?
        shockzzz 11y ago
        Hey nrh, Nice! Did you have the data tooling built out before you went to Google Cloud? If you did, I could imagine the migration was pretty hard as well. Also, all of those seem relatively possible with AWS Redshift, Kinesis, and Data Pipelines. I'm interested what Google Cloud had to offer, spec-wise.
      - eshvk 11y ago
        rolls eyes I have been playing with their stuff internally for a while now and no one told me that we would get a discount for a tweet. I tweet about shit I like. There is no giant conspiracy.
  - teach 11y ago
    http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

skj 11y ago

A puff piece would be if some tech reporter wrote about the wonders of GCP. This is the Spotify team, and they've clearly put their money where their mouth is by actually making the move.

wcummings 11y ago
Marketing blog spam is the new puff piece.
- vgt 11y ago
  Would you prefer testaments like these from Spotify engineers? https://twitter.com/plamere/status/702168809445134336 https://twitter.com/plamere/status/702168809445134336 https://twitter.com/plamere/status/702169733454495745 https://twitter.com/plamere/status/702169733454495745 https://twitter.com/mpjme/status/702167231623516160 https://twitter.com/mpjme/status/702167231623516160
  - shockzzz 11y ago
    Kind of. We all know that companies cut deals with providers in exchange for blog posts, tweets, and other sorts of promotion. I'm always wary of posts like these, especially when they lack detail or awareness of competing products.
    - vgt 11y ago
      I think if Spotify dressed down Google Cloud Platform competition, no matter the merit, there would be many more complaints (ex. see comments on this technical post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11029032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11029032). Spotify did say that they really enjoy specific aspects of Google Cloud Platform, through their own engineering blog. Spotify engineers have also been independently vocal on Twitter. Netflix has been very similarly vocal of their support of AWS. I'd love to hear your thoughts on a better mindshare model, perhaps we can all learn to do things a bit better.
      - shockzzz 11y ago
        Right, I don't think they have to directly attack anyone. It's just a matter of tradeoffs - here are the things the Google Cloud gets us, here's a specific example that hones it in, and here's why that's critical to our business. At the moment, the blog post just says, "Yay we moved to the cloud" and threw out some marketing buzzwords. It should be beyond a shadow of doubt that they got a lower price as a result. That's ok - now give us the details! On a product level, what made Google Cloud so compelling that you were willing to move your entire infrastructure to it? That question really wasn't answered, and is really the biggest thing, as a customer, I'd want. Right now, I'd have to call Spotify as a reference in order to do to get that answer, which again allows them bring the price lower. Not necessarily democratize the information.
        nrh 11y ago
        Spotifier here. Frankly, price is not the biggest factor in a decision like this. If we were going for the lowest cost cloud option, it probably wouldn't be either AWS or Google - there are other providers who are hungrier for business that would be willing to do deep cuts at our scale. The way we think about this is that there are basically two classes of cloud services: commodities and differentiated services. Commodities are storage/network/compute, and the big players are going to compete on price and quality on these for the foreseeable future (as with most commodities). The differentiated services stuff is a bit more interesting. Different players have different strengths and weaknesses here - AWS has way, way better capabilities when it comes to administration and access control and identity management, for example (which is actually pretty important when trying to do this in a large org). The places were Google is strong (data platform) are the places that are most important for us as a business. Compelling: dataproc+gcs, bigquery, pubsub, dataflow Made it safe: high-enough quality, cheap enough. What more would you like to know?
        shockzzz 11y ago
        Hey nrh, Nice! Did you have the data tooling built out before you went to Google Cloud? If you did, I could imagine the migration was pretty hard as well. Also, all of those seem relatively possible with AWS Redshift, Kinesis, and Data Pipelines. I'm interested what Google Cloud had to offer, spec-wise.
    - eshvk 11y ago
      rolls eyes I have been playing with their stuff internally for a while now and no one told me that we would get a discount for a tweet. I tweet about shit I like. There is no giant conspiracy.
- teach 11y ago
  http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html