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I've been relying on multiple Cloud offerings (including PaaS, IaaS etc) outside Google for many years, but for some unclear reason, I cannot manage to consider

I've been relying on multiple Cloud offerings (including PaaS, IaaS etc) outside Google for many years, but for some unclear reason, I cannot manage to consider Google a reliable partner for a type of hosting or another, at this point. I would love to be proven wrong really, because I often look at their GC offering, and I /really/ want to dive in, yet I feel that I would risk having to migrate quickly in 2 weeks at some point because they are changing things significantly (either shutting down or other major change). So to my question: for how long have these services been around in a fashion that is stable (feature-wise, quality-wise etc)? Is there anyone here with a longer history of using Google Cloud offering, able to comment on this? EDIT: thanks to everyone who replied below. I think I'll give it a try :-)

latchkey 11y ago
I should add, I've been on top of AppEngine for about 4 years now. This is my second business on it.
- nanoojaboo 11y ago
  but what's your businesss (that you're hiring for)
obulpathi 11y ago
I have been running my website on AppEngine for 6+ years now. No problems at all.
- arouzrokh 11y ago
  Thank you obulpathi and glad to hear this. Can you also take a look at our new docs here: cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/ and let me know what you think? This is an iterative effort of course, so more changes to come. Thanks again!
boulos 11y ago
For Google Cloud products that have made it to General Availability (GA), we have a one-year deprecation policy (https://cloud.google.com/terms/ https://cloud.google.com/terms/, Section 7.2). That is, if we're going to make some big change, we give you a 1 year heads up. Disclaimer: I work on Compute Engine, but I'm not a lawyer ;).
- rudolf0 11y ago
  This is good, but I wish Google offered the same policy for most of their other general cloud services.
- nkw 11y ago
  Promises to do something for a year which you can change or withdraw after 30 days are really promises for 30 days: "Google may make changes to this Agreement, including pricing (and any linked documents) from time to time. Unless otherwise noted by Google, material changes to the Agreement will become effective 30 days after they are posted, except if the changes apply to new functionality in which case they will be effective immediately. If Customer does not agree to the revised Agreement, please stop using the Services." https://cloud.google.com/terms/ https://cloud.google.com/terms/, Section 1.7b Also, Sections 13.1-13.3 means even though Google promises nt to do something, you really don't have any recourse if they do it anyway and cause you damage. Although in the grand scheme of things, not the worst terms of service document I have read. The mere fact the drafters addressed the issue is worth ... something. Disclaimer: IAMALBIANYL.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    > Disclaimer: IAMALBIANYL. I like that one. :) I have a question though, is the prevalence of taglines in any way related to legal requirements? Do you have to stipulate that you aren't a lawyer when stating things because otherwise people to construe it as legal advice, or is it just a fun little identifier of how valid we should consider information to be (like it is in other acronyms of the same type)?
    - nkw 11y ago
kyrra 11y ago
Anecdotal: AppEngine deprecated their Master/Slave datastore[0] in April 2012, and it was actually shutdown on July 6, 2015. So that's 3+ years to move to newer tech. [0] http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2012/04/masterslave-datastore-thanks-for-all.html http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2012/04/masterslave-data...
- stickfigure 11y ago
  Also worth noting that Google built an automated tool to handle the M/S to HRD datastore migration for you. It was remarkably painless.
  - QuercusMax 11y ago
    Painless eventually; the first versions didn't work at all, at least on the project I was involved with. Fortunately by the time you had to switch, it worked very well.
    - ariwilson 11y ago
      Being first to migrate to the hot new infrastructure has never worked out for me in any project.
  - TorKlingberg 11y ago
    I was mildly annoyed that I had to spend an afternoon "migrating" my app from the M/S datastore, even though I never used it in the first place.
  - jontro 11y ago
    I really struggled around 12 months ago. Lots of weird errors and it took down the service unexpectedly when trying to stage it. Really made me regret going with app engine a few years ago.
MichaelBurge 11y ago
I wonder how big you'd have to be to get a real SLA from Google, Azure, or AWS. I imagine 25% off your hosting bill doesn't really cut it for those companies running millions of dollars in revenue through it.
- jsmthrowaway 11y ago
  I've had admin on an account that did about half a million USD on AWS monthly in the past; we cut it down a lot by expanding physically and going in hard on reserved instances, but my view into things started around there. I'm unsure if we ever attempted to negotiate a SLA, but we paid for premium support just like you (despite having a dedicated, and great, sales rep) and got kickback credits from the general SLA policy[0] just like you. Nothing special. If anybody has a special deal, it's probably Netflix. I suspect even half a million monthly is a smaller account to Amazon. [0]: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/sla/historical/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/sla/historical/ specifically, not the current (better) one
abrookewood 11y ago
The problem (I suffer from it as well), is that people naturally feel that the corporate offerings from Google will mirror the experience that they have with the consumer offerings from Google. And the big issue with Google's consumer offerings is that they seem to have limited to no support and that there is a very real chance that Google will just shut them down all of a sudden. This is the exact opposite of what you want in the enterprise space, where Service & Stability are paramount. Even though I know that Google's corporate offerings are treated differently, that little niggling doubt remains. Plus, Google really needs to hire some damn marketing experts to sell the features & benefits of their offerings and make them cohesive - they just have their stuff plastered everywhere.
- jakejake 11y ago
  That's pretty much exactly what my perception is. Add to that, you're account gets shut down and/or frozen without warning and only a kafka-esque system to find out why you were shut down. It makes sense that isn't true but I have to admit it is what comes to mind.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > And the big issue with Google's consumer offerings is that they seem to have limited to no support and that there is a very real chance that Google will just shut them down all of a sudden. Express has, IME, excellent support, and I haven't seen any Google product (consumer or otherwise) shutdown "all of a sudden". The ones people point to as examples of Google products being shut down were shut down with very long notice. I do think that there is a very loud group of people who like to raise the "Google's just gonna shut it down tomorrow" line every time a Google service is mentioned, but it doesn't seem to be based on any real history of Google being any more prone than any other provider to shut down services (consumer or otherwise) on short notice or without a migration path. Maybe that loud group represents a real and commercially-significant feeling about Google in the market and not just a small, loud group that doesn't real effect the market for Google products. But I don't know what you can really do with that, even if it does.
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  This is also my impression of Google compute offerings, but it's also my impression of AWS offerings. I mean, when people think of AWS services, do "service and stability" really come to mind? IME it's impossible to reach a person unless you're a multi-million-dollar org, and Amazon itself tells customers that AWS services can go down at any time and it's up to the customer to architect the application to deal with it. If I had to peg a reason AWS gets treated differently in the marketplace, I think it's probably some combination of a) AWS was first to market, and b) AWS revenue seems materially important to Amazon, while Google Compute revenue is a rounding error to Alphabet. Therefore, Amazon has a lot more incentive to keep, maintain, and grow AWS.

latchkey 11y ago

I should add, I've been on top of AppEngine for about 4 years now. This is my second business on it.

nanoojaboo 11y ago
but what's your businesss (that you're hiring for)

obulpathi 11y ago

I have been running my website on AppEngine for 6+ years now. No problems at all.

arouzrokh 11y ago
Thank you obulpathi and glad to hear this. Can you also take a look at our new docs here: cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/ and let me know what you think? This is an iterative effort of course, so more changes to come. Thanks again!

boulos 11y ago

For Google Cloud products that have made it to General Availability (GA), we have a one-year deprecation policy (https://cloud.google.com/terms/ https://cloud.google.com/terms/, Section 7.2). That is, if we're going to make some big change, we give you a 1 year heads up. Disclaimer: I work on Compute Engine, but I'm not a lawyer ;).

rudolf0 11y ago
This is good, but I wish Google offered the same policy for most of their other general cloud services.
nkw 11y ago
Promises to do something for a year which you can change or withdraw after 30 days are really promises for 30 days: "Google may make changes to this Agreement, including pricing (and any linked documents) from time to time. Unless otherwise noted by Google, material changes to the Agreement will become effective 30 days after they are posted, except if the changes apply to new functionality in which case they will be effective immediately. If Customer does not agree to the revised Agreement, please stop using the Services." https://cloud.google.com/terms/ https://cloud.google.com/terms/, Section 1.7b Also, Sections 13.1-13.3 means even though Google promises nt to do something, you really don't have any recourse if they do it anyway and cause you damage. Although in the grand scheme of things, not the worst terms of service document I have read. The mere fact the drafters addressed the issue is worth ... something. Disclaimer: IAMALBIANYL.
- kbenson 11y ago
  > Disclaimer: IAMALBIANYL. I like that one. :) I have a question though, is the prevalence of taglines in any way related to legal requirements? Do you have to stipulate that you aren't a lawyer when stating things because otherwise people to construe it as legal advice, or is it just a fun little identifier of how valid we should consider information to be (like it is in other acronyms of the same type)?
  - nkw 11y ago

kyrra 11y ago

Anecdotal: AppEngine deprecated their Master/Slave datastore[0] in April 2012, and it was actually shutdown on July 6, 2015. So that's 3+ years to move to newer tech. [0] http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2012/04/masterslave-datastore-thanks-for-all.html http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2012/04/masterslave-data...

stickfigure 11y ago
Also worth noting that Google built an automated tool to handle the M/S to HRD datastore migration for you. It was remarkably painless.
- QuercusMax 11y ago
  Painless eventually; the first versions didn't work at all, at least on the project I was involved with. Fortunately by the time you had to switch, it worked very well.
  - ariwilson 11y ago
    Being first to migrate to the hot new infrastructure has never worked out for me in any project.
- TorKlingberg 11y ago
  I was mildly annoyed that I had to spend an afternoon "migrating" my app from the M/S datastore, even though I never used it in the first place.
- jontro 11y ago
  I really struggled around 12 months ago. Lots of weird errors and it took down the service unexpectedly when trying to stage it. Really made me regret going with app engine a few years ago.

MichaelBurge 11y ago

I wonder how big you'd have to be to get a real SLA from Google, Azure, or AWS. I imagine 25% off your hosting bill doesn't really cut it for those companies running millions of dollars in revenue through it.

jsmthrowaway 11y ago
I've had admin on an account that did about half a million USD on AWS monthly in the past; we cut it down a lot by expanding physically and going in hard on reserved instances, but my view into things started around there. I'm unsure if we ever attempted to negotiate a SLA, but we paid for premium support just like you (despite having a dedicated, and great, sales rep) and got kickback credits from the general SLA policy[0] just like you. Nothing special. If anybody has a special deal, it's probably Netflix. I suspect even half a million monthly is a smaller account to Amazon. [0]: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/sla/historical/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/sla/historical/ specifically, not the current (better) one

abrookewood 11y ago

The problem (I suffer from it as well), is that people naturally feel that the corporate offerings from Google will mirror the experience that they have with the consumer offerings from Google. And the big issue with Google's consumer offerings is that they seem to have limited to no support and that there is a very real chance that Google will just shut them down all of a sudden. This is the exact opposite of what you want in the enterprise space, where Service & Stability are paramount. Even though I know that Google's corporate offerings are treated differently, that little niggling doubt remains. Plus, Google really needs to hire some damn marketing experts to sell the features & benefits of their offerings and make them cohesive - they just have their stuff plastered everywhere.

jakejake 11y ago
That's pretty much exactly what my perception is. Add to that, you're account gets shut down and/or frozen without warning and only a kafka-esque system to find out why you were shut down. It makes sense that isn't true but I have to admit it is what comes to mind.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> And the big issue with Google's consumer offerings is that they seem to have limited to no support and that there is a very real chance that Google will just shut them down all of a sudden. Express has, IME, excellent support, and I haven't seen any Google product (consumer or otherwise) shutdown "all of a sudden". The ones people point to as examples of Google products being shut down were shut down with very long notice. I do think that there is a very loud group of people who like to raise the "Google's just gonna shut it down tomorrow" line every time a Google service is mentioned, but it doesn't seem to be based on any real history of Google being any more prone than any other provider to shut down services (consumer or otherwise) on short notice or without a migration path. Maybe that loud group represents a real and commercially-significant feeling about Google in the market and not just a small, loud group that doesn't real effect the market for Google products. But I don't know what you can really do with that, even if it does.
snowwrestler 11y ago
This is also my impression of Google compute offerings, but it's also my impression of AWS offerings. I mean, when people think of AWS services, do "service and stability" really come to mind? IME it's impossible to reach a person unless you're a multi-million-dollar org, and Amazon itself tells customers that AWS services can go down at any time and it's up to the customer to architect the application to deal with it. If I had to peg a reason AWS gets treated differently in the marketplace, I think it's probably some combination of a) AWS was first to market, and b) AWS revenue seems materially important to Amazon, while Google Compute revenue is a rounding error to Alphabet. Therefore, Amazon has a lot more incentive to keep, maintain, and grow AWS.