5 ms·

2008. I remember those days. GMail was still in beta and ' a big area of concern was "Why won't Google just shut this down when the going gets rough?" ' 8 yea

by fhoffa 11y ago

2008. I remember those days. GMail was still in beta and ' a big area of concern was "Why won't Google just shut this down when the going gets rough?" ' 8 years later GMail has a billion users, and not going anywhere but up. I haven't been to the future (yet), but I'll happily take any bet you have against BigQuery. Disclaimer: I'm Felipe Hoffa, and I work at Google. (https://twitter.com/felipehoffa https://twitter.com/felipehoffa)

philovivero 11y ago
Can you give me an update on Wave and Orkut? I never use this Reader thing, but I hear others do.
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- vgt 11y ago
  I'm happy to respond to every single person that makes this argument in perpetuity :) There's a difference between experimental free services and Enterprise-grade SLA'd SLO'd fully-supported paid services with a very clear and recorded deprecation policy and an army of customers with contracts and full support from Google CEO and chairman.
  - dingaling 11y ago
    Indeed, but who is paying to maintain 546GB of online storage ( plus backups ) for Reddit comments in BigQuery, for example? If the answer is "Google" then I think people are still right to be cautious. Or to invert the question; could I put 1TB of my own 'interesting' data into BigQuery and have Google maintain it in perpetuity for free? If not, then why are any of these datasets considered safer?
    - ucaetano 11y ago
      This is a paid service.
    - illumin8 11y ago
      If you think Google even cares about 546GB of online storage you've gotta be kidding. This is like asking if Google is going to eliminate the free water in the water cooler because it costs a few cents per employee. You can put 1TB of your own interesting data in BigQuery and pay $0.02/GB/month for the data storage fees. I'm sure Google will happily take your money as a paying customer, and keep your data for as long as you want to store it and pay for it.
incepted 11y ago
There are not really comparable. The value of an email service is how many users it has. The value of a big database is... who knows? If Google one day decides the content of that database is a strategic asset, they might just as well decide to shut it down to the public and continue using it internally.
greglindahl 11y ago
gmail is a low-margin business, compared to search advertising. Does it have any non-creepy way to make huge margins? If not, why is getting big mean anything but danger?
e12e 11y ago
As long as IMAP support doesn't go the way of XMPP support for gtalk/hangouts...

by fhoffa 11y ago

philovivero 11y ago

Can you give me an update on Wave and Orkut? I never use this Reader thing, but I hear others do.

deleted 11y ago
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vgt 11y ago
I'm happy to respond to every single person that makes this argument in perpetuity :) There's a difference between experimental free services and Enterprise-grade SLA'd SLO'd fully-supported paid services with a very clear and recorded deprecation policy and an army of customers with contracts and full support from Google CEO and chairman.
- dingaling 11y ago
  Indeed, but who is paying to maintain 546GB of online storage ( plus backups ) for Reddit comments in BigQuery, for example? If the answer is "Google" then I think people are still right to be cautious. Or to invert the question; could I put 1TB of my own 'interesting' data into BigQuery and have Google maintain it in perpetuity for free? If not, then why are any of these datasets considered safer?
  - ucaetano 11y ago
    This is a paid service.
  - illumin8 11y ago
    If you think Google even cares about 546GB of online storage you've gotta be kidding. This is like asking if Google is going to eliminate the free water in the water cooler because it costs a few cents per employee. You can put 1TB of your own interesting data in BigQuery and pay $0.02/GB/month for the data storage fees. I'm sure Google will happily take your money as a paying customer, and keep your data for as long as you want to store it and pay for it.

incepted 11y ago

There are not really comparable. The value of an email service is how many users it has. The value of a big database is... who knows? If Google one day decides the content of that database is a strategic asset, they might just as well decide to shut it down to the public and continue using it internally.

greglindahl 11y ago

gmail is a low-margin business, compared to search advertising. Does it have any non-creepy way to make huge margins? If not, why is getting big mean anything but danger?

e12e 11y ago

As long as IMAP support doesn't go the way of XMPP support for gtalk/hangouts...