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If you watch closely on Google's move in the area of externalizing internal technologies, you can see a clear trend of reducing secrecy of Google technologies.

If you watch closely on Google's move in the area of externalizing internal technologies, you can see a clear trend of reducing secrecy of Google technologies. The reason, apparently is because Google can no longer sit comfortably behind the scene to watch others play the catch up. Previously Google do not care, because they dont want to share internal Cloud with you. Now they need the profit from Cloud. Google needs to show that it is still the leader. Previously, Google does not need to show anything and all believe they are the leader. After missing the Cloud movement in the past years, Google's reputation has been tainted, and they have to show hard proofs. For example, when choosing cloud providers, AWS is still the clear no1. People probably still believe that GCP is better than AWS. But GCP does not have the proof. However, if Google somehow can catch up and beat AWS in a decisive manner overnight, then Google still does not need to share anything; and no one will question that Google is the leader. Apparently, Google is not able to do that. It might be that Google is not focused enough. But Google cannot let people have the other impression "Google's technologies might not be as good as we thought" grow in people's mind. Can you imagine what would happen if Google started the Cloud thingy at the same time as AWS? Then Google certainly do not need to share a damn thing with outside world...

surfmike 11y ago
It doesn't make sense to me that sharing these details necessarily improves the reputation of GCP. The point of cloud platforms is that you don't have to know or think about how the server racks are made or stored.
- justicezyx 11y ago
  Why would you choose GCP over AWS at this point? Other than the potential that in the near future GCP can provide services that are cheaper, more reliable, and more performant (note that none of these are true today).
  - vgt 11y ago
    Just yesterday Quizlet posted a long expose that, in their opinions, shows that GCP is cheaper, more reliable (live migration), more performant than AWS, with details to boot: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11260137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11260137 And last month Spotify did the same thing. The price differences between EC2 and GCE, especially with Custom VMs, is massive. Up to 40% according to this: http://www.zdnet.com/article/what-google-says-to-aws-price-cuts-our-cloud-is-still-way-cheaper/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/what-google-says-to-aws-price-c...
atomic77 11y ago
I kind of see where you are going with this, but perception may not be as important here as you are suggesting. To address your last 'if' scenario - notice that Amazon, as a large online retailer, had a compelling reason to offer up the use of the infrastructure they had to build anyway, which was over-provisioned for most of the year. I don't have numbers, but I would be surprised if Google has anything close to the kind of seasonality Amazon experiences. Once it became clear that Amazon was onto something with this whole utility computing/cloud thing, the rest had to play catch up, and continue to do so to this day.

surfmike 11y ago

It doesn't make sense to me that sharing these details necessarily improves the reputation of GCP. The point of cloud platforms is that you don't have to know or think about how the server racks are made or stored.

justicezyx 11y ago
Why would you choose GCP over AWS at this point? Other than the potential that in the near future GCP can provide services that are cheaper, more reliable, and more performant (note that none of these are true today).
- vgt 11y ago
  Just yesterday Quizlet posted a long expose that, in their opinions, shows that GCP is cheaper, more reliable (live migration), more performant than AWS, with details to boot: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11260137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11260137 And last month Spotify did the same thing. The price differences between EC2 and GCE, especially with Custom VMs, is massive. Up to 40% according to this: http://www.zdnet.com/article/what-google-says-to-aws-price-cuts-our-cloud-is-still-way-cheaper/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/what-google-says-to-aws-price-c...

atomic77 11y ago

I kind of see where you are going with this, but perception may not be as important here as you are suggesting. To address your last 'if' scenario - notice that Amazon, as a large online retailer, had a compelling reason to offer up the use of the infrastructure they had to build anyway, which was over-provisioned for most of the year. I don't have numbers, but I would be surprised if Google has anything close to the kind of seasonality Amazon experiences. Once it became clear that Amazon was onto something with this whole utility computing/cloud thing, the rest had to play catch up, and continue to do so to this day.