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so triggering. but mainly my fear in using GCP is this: Google is a product psycho, this is not their core business, I get the feeling that anything about GCP c

so triggering. but mainly my fear in using GCP is this: Google is a product psycho, this is not their core business, I get the feeling that anything about GCP could change or disappear at any time for any reason and I as the customer is left to react to these changes.

jedc 10y ago
It hasn't been their core business historically, but all they're doing is commercializing stuff that's been in internal use for many years. And they've publicly been making a VERY hard push into the cloud business... they aren't going anywhere.
- godisdad 10y ago
  They hired Ray Kurzweil too, I'm sure they're trying to commercialize the singularity. GOOG/Alphabet as a company is going to be around, but will this line of business be with this set of offerings?
KirinDave 10y ago
> I get the feeling that anything about GCP could change or disappear at any time for any reason and I as the customer is left to react to these changes. Google is very committed to GCP and you see it in their work. Much like Amazon, they have a huge sum of computing capacity they aren't always using. It's an obvious business play. But what's more, it's become the basis of differentiating their mobile platform. Google is trying to develop and sell-for-cheap the tools to make really good mobile apps (e.g., Firebase) to try and shore up the app ecosystem of their platform. Given that a lot of the things they offer are 3rd gen variants of their core tech for developing things internally, it seems fairly reasonable to assume they're in this for the long haul.
- godisdad 10y ago
  It's a reasonable assumption, but still an assumption and a risk to take on. There are really compelling things about GCP not even mentioned in the article but I'm not sure if Google's got enough skin in the game to warrant me predicating my infrastructure on it without deep pricing incentives. Digital Ocean and AWS are dedicated to continuing this line of business and keeping those customers addicted. Google is conducting another large and expensive moon shot which fine since it's part of their DNA.
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    They've been in the business for 8 years with steady progress. What's more, their container-based solution is also an open source platform that runs competently on Azure and AWS. I'm not sure you can say it is an expensive moonshot at this point. I'm not using them, myself, but I wouldn't consider that aspect of the risk substantial given the fact that I could erect identical infrastructure on AWS in the worst case scenario. And I have had to plan exit scenarios from AWS because ultimately they're a single vendor with arbitrary control over their platform, as well.
  - bitmapbrother 10y ago
    Not enough skin in the game? They're bringing an additional 10 datacenters online in 2017 and they just opened an additional 2 in 2016. Building that many data centers costs Billions. If that's not having "skin in the game" I don't know what is.
kyrra 10y ago
Google has been putting a lot of time and effort into cloud in the recent years and doesn't look to be slowing down anytime soon. As to ease your worry here a little, any launched cloud products have at a minimum a 1-year deprecation policy[0]. Anecdotal: AppEngine deprecated their Master/Slave datastore[1] in April 2012, and it was actually shutdown on July 6, 2015. So that's 3+ years to move to newer tech. [0] https://cloud.google.com/terms/ https://cloud.google.com/terms/ (section 7.2) [1] http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2012/04/masterslave-datastore-thanks-for-all.html http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2012/04/masterslave-data...
- markdown 10y ago
  Their record is 4yrs for ClientLogin: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/deprecations/ https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/deprecations/
- Twirrim 10y ago
  Here's the thing: 12 months deprecation notice is abysmal for a key business demographic, enterprise customers. That's lightning fast for many of them. Planning and moving that much infrastructure, data etc. is non-trivial takes a lot of time and hard work. You point out examples of longer deprecation, but that doesn't matter one iota to people evaluating the cloud. Track record isn't legally binding, unlike the contractual 12 months.
melvinmt 10y ago
> Google is a product psycho, this is not their core business So you're advocating we should trust the book vendor?
- godisdad 10y ago
  It's not a matter of "trust" - I don't trust the plumber to fix my toilet more than the rando I can find on Craigslist per se, but I do have the expectation that he intends to continue plumber-ing and will be around to stand by his work in three months time.
- nickbauman 10y ago
  This isn't a fair criticism. Amazon is in the Cloud Services business and has a retail business on the side. Look at where their profits are: 66% of Amazon's profits last quarter are from its cloud biz.
- placeybordeaux 10y ago
  AWS is the cash cow of amazon for now. They get their safest margins there and revenue to match.
  - melvinmt 10y ago
    Yes, exactly. That's why GCE should be as important to Google as AWS is to Amazon while arguably both have a different "core business".
- adventured 10y ago
  After ten years of AWS, and with the vast operating income AWS is now providing Amazon - yep.
joshkpeterson 10y ago
Yeah GCP changed fundamentally / moved how certificates are managed, and didn't notify their users. It was really confusing for us and caused issues.
nickbauman 10y ago
Yeah I totally get you. But my experience with GCP since its inception (I'm an early adopter) is different than the rest of Google. The only "nasty" I've encountered like this was the deprecation of the Master/Slave Replication Datastore to the newer High Replication Datastore, which, to be fair, they gave me almost a year to remedy before one of my app instances became inaccessible. I blame myself, but it was still painful.
- markdown 10y ago
  > they gave me almost a year 3. They gave you more than 3 years :) https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/deprecations/ https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/deprecations/
  - nickbauman 10y ago
    I stand corrected!
wrsh07 10y ago
I agree that the OP is terrible, but it looks like GCP has quarterly revenue close to a billion [1], while AWS is at 2.6 billion [2]. That doesn't seem like such a huge gap that one of them is substantially more invested in it. [1]: http://www.networkworld.com/article/3029164/cloud-computing/what-google-s-earnings-tell-us-about-its-cloud-business.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/3029164/cloud-computing/... [2]: http://www.recode.net/2016/4/28/11586526/aws-cloud-revenue-growth http://www.recode.net/2016/4/28/11586526/aws-cloud-revenue-g...
- phonon 10y ago
  Not even close, that includes Google apps for work and other SaaS services.
markdown 10y ago
https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/deprecations/ https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/deprecations/
jacques_chester 10y ago
The public cloud space is going to be ginormagantuan. It's just too big to ignore. GCP is Google's Xbox: I expect they'll throw money at it for a decade, if they have to, because it's too fantastic a market to ignore. AWS is there through first-to-market leadership. Microsoft is there because they've got a strong sense of what every SME and Enterprise customer in the world wants. Google are there because they have deep expertise in building these kinds of systems and it would be utterly bonkers not to try and diversify into this field.

jedc 10y ago

It hasn't been their core business historically, but all they're doing is commercializing stuff that's been in internal use for many years. And they've publicly been making a VERY hard push into the cloud business... they aren't going anywhere.

godisdad 10y ago
They hired Ray Kurzweil too, I'm sure they're trying to commercialize the singularity. GOOG/Alphabet as a company is going to be around, but will this line of business be with this set of offerings?

KirinDave 10y ago

> I get the feeling that anything about GCP could change or disappear at any time for any reason and I as the customer is left to react to these changes. Google is very committed to GCP and you see it in their work. Much like Amazon, they have a huge sum of computing capacity they aren't always using. It's an obvious business play. But what's more, it's become the basis of differentiating their mobile platform. Google is trying to develop and sell-for-cheap the tools to make really good mobile apps (e.g., Firebase) to try and shore up the app ecosystem of their platform. Given that a lot of the things they offer are 3rd gen variants of their core tech for developing things internally, it seems fairly reasonable to assume they're in this for the long haul.

godisdad 10y ago
It's a reasonable assumption, but still an assumption and a risk to take on. There are really compelling things about GCP not even mentioned in the article but I'm not sure if Google's got enough skin in the game to warrant me predicating my infrastructure on it without deep pricing incentives. Digital Ocean and AWS are dedicated to continuing this line of business and keeping those customers addicted. Google is conducting another large and expensive moon shot which fine since it's part of their DNA.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  They've been in the business for 8 years with steady progress. What's more, their container-based solution is also an open source platform that runs competently on Azure and AWS. I'm not sure you can say it is an expensive moonshot at this point. I'm not using them, myself, but I wouldn't consider that aspect of the risk substantial given the fact that I could erect identical infrastructure on AWS in the worst case scenario. And I have had to plan exit scenarios from AWS because ultimately they're a single vendor with arbitrary control over their platform, as well.
- bitmapbrother 10y ago
  Not enough skin in the game? They're bringing an additional 10 datacenters online in 2017 and they just opened an additional 2 in 2016. Building that many data centers costs Billions. If that's not having "skin in the game" I don't know what is.

kyrra 10y ago

Google has been putting a lot of time and effort into cloud in the recent years and doesn't look to be slowing down anytime soon. As to ease your worry here a little, any launched cloud products have at a minimum a 1-year deprecation policy[0]. Anecdotal: AppEngine deprecated their Master/Slave datastore[1] in April 2012, and it was actually shutdown on July 6, 2015. So that's 3+ years to move to newer tech. [0] https://cloud.google.com/terms/ https://cloud.google.com/terms/ (section 7.2) [1] http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2012/04/masterslave-datastore-thanks-for-all.html http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2012/04/masterslave-data...

markdown 10y ago
Their record is 4yrs for ClientLogin: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/deprecations/ https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/deprecations/
Twirrim 10y ago
Here's the thing: 12 months deprecation notice is abysmal for a key business demographic, enterprise customers. That's lightning fast for many of them. Planning and moving that much infrastructure, data etc. is non-trivial takes a lot of time and hard work. You point out examples of longer deprecation, but that doesn't matter one iota to people evaluating the cloud. Track record isn't legally binding, unlike the contractual 12 months.

melvinmt 10y ago

> Google is a product psycho, this is not their core business So you're advocating we should trust the book vendor?

godisdad 10y ago
It's not a matter of "trust" - I don't trust the plumber to fix my toilet more than the rando I can find on Craigslist per se, but I do have the expectation that he intends to continue plumber-ing and will be around to stand by his work in three months time.
nickbauman 10y ago
This isn't a fair criticism. Amazon is in the Cloud Services business and has a retail business on the side. Look at where their profits are: 66% of Amazon's profits last quarter are from its cloud biz.
placeybordeaux 10y ago
AWS is the cash cow of amazon for now. They get their safest margins there and revenue to match.
- melvinmt 10y ago
  Yes, exactly. That's why GCE should be as important to Google as AWS is to Amazon while arguably both have a different "core business".
adventured 10y ago
After ten years of AWS, and with the vast operating income AWS is now providing Amazon - yep.

joshkpeterson 10y ago

Yeah GCP changed fundamentally / moved how certificates are managed, and didn't notify their users. It was really confusing for us and caused issues.

nickbauman 10y ago

Yeah I totally get you. But my experience with GCP since its inception (I'm an early adopter) is different than the rest of Google. The only "nasty" I've encountered like this was the deprecation of the Master/Slave Replication Datastore to the newer High Replication Datastore, which, to be fair, they gave me almost a year to remedy before one of my app instances became inaccessible. I blame myself, but it was still painful.

markdown 10y ago
> they gave me almost a year 3. They gave you more than 3 years :) https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/deprecations/ https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/deprecations/
- nickbauman 10y ago
  I stand corrected!

wrsh07 10y ago

I agree that the OP is terrible, but it looks like GCP has quarterly revenue close to a billion [1], while AWS is at 2.6 billion [2]. That doesn't seem like such a huge gap that one of them is substantially more invested in it. [1]: http://www.networkworld.com/article/3029164/cloud-computing/what-google-s-earnings-tell-us-about-its-cloud-business.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/3029164/cloud-computing/... [2]: http://www.recode.net/2016/4/28/11586526/aws-cloud-revenue-growth http://www.recode.net/2016/4/28/11586526/aws-cloud-revenue-g...

phonon 10y ago
Not even close, that includes Google apps for work and other SaaS services.

markdown 10y ago

https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/deprecations/ https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/deprecations/

jacques_chester 10y ago

The public cloud space is going to be ginormagantuan. It's just too big to ignore. GCP is Google's Xbox: I expect they'll throw money at it for a decade, if they have to, because it's too fantastic a market to ignore. AWS is there through first-to-market leadership. Microsoft is there because they've got a strong sense of what every SME and Enterprise customer in the world wants. Google are there because they have deep expertise in building these kinds of systems and it would be utterly bonkers not to try and diversify into this field.