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IIRC I think I have seen some people here argue it is because they have close to no customer support. From Amazon however I have even heard about them forgive

IIRC I think I have seen some people here argue it is because they have close to no customer support. From Amazon however I have even heard about them forgive bills where the customer was really to blame. All this is hearsay though and I don't think Amazon does this out of the goodness of Jeffs heart but as long as enough people think this is how it works it might be part of why people will use AWS even if it is more expensive.

vgt 10y ago
Our support folks can comment here, but I would disagree with that point. Our support org is massive, there are varying tiers levels of Support SCE/CRE/SRE/SWE-level of support, all the way up to [0]. I'll also comment that Google's Eng/PM org is very engaged. It's not unusual for an engineer in charge of a service to help resolve a customer an issue. [0] https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/introducing-a-new-era-of-customer-support-Google-Customer-Reliability-Engineering.html https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/introducing-a-n... (work on Google Cloud but do not get paid to post here)
- kuschku 10y ago
  > It's not unusual for an engineer in charge of a service to help resolve a customer an issue. This is not related to Google Cloud, but to GSuite: Or, if you get an engineer on the phone, through the support number, they just insult you, and hang up on you, as has happened to me once (back when the free tier of GSuite was still a thing).
  - vgt 10y ago
    That's unacceptable anywhere. I know Google support spends gobs of time quantifying customer success and happiness, gets measured and rewarded by these numbers. Nature of support anywhere is that sadly you'll always have some folks with a bad experience, all you can do is try to make it right by all.
- StreamBright 10y ago
  I am not sure that you can really use the size of your support org when talking about customer experience. Why don't you come up with a 3rd party customer survey about how your customers are happy with you compare to Amazon? If you are absolutely certain that your support is great it would prove the point.
  - vgt 10y ago
    I agree, size of support org is probably not directly correlated to quality. I was mostly responding to parent, who made the argument that Google can afford to be inexpensive due to lack of investment in the support org. I do assure you that Google Cloud invests a whole lot of time and money thinking about customer happiness, as should all organizations. In the public cloud business, customer happiness is everything.
- ignoramous 10y ago
  > It's not unusual for an engineer in charge of a service to help resolve a customer an issue. This is the norm with AWS, in case you didn't know. Like someone pointed out, having a deeply engrained customer-focussed culture is different from having a massive support org that quantifies customer happiness as datapoints on a review board somewhere in cozy SV offices.
  - vgt 10y ago
    I actually was not comparing Google to Amazon here, apologies if you got that from my post. I was mostly responding to the parent, whose argument was that Google is so much more inexpensive than AWS because Google doesn't invest in support. My experience has been the opposite. I am also not going to get into a discussion with an AWS employee about culture health between the two organizations. Both are trying to do it right for the customers, and both have unique challenges, regardless of the amount of coziness of their offices :) It's unfair to paint Google as "out of touch" and "not customer focused", just like it is unfair to bring up horror stories about Amazon culture, especially if you're employed by a competitor. Apologies, again, but are you an AWS employee? I don't want to inaccurately label you as such, but your posts hint at it. (work at Google Cloud)
    - ignoramous 10y ago
      Perhaps I read too much into something you didn't even mean to compare. Sorry about that. Thanks for clarifying statements and generally taking time to respond throughout the thread. I work for Amazon, yes.
jacques_chester 10y ago
> they have close to no customer support. In the last three days I have been able, in my day job, to personally ask a Google PM to pull Google Cloud engineers into a shared slack channel to help. It took us longer to set up the slack permissions for the googlers to join than it took for Google folk to identify who to pull in.
- delifaz27 10y ago
  You failed to mention you are a major partner of Google Cloud. So the average customer probably should not expect the same response.
  - jacques_chester 10y ago
    For those who are wondering, I work for Pivotal. We are also a major partner of Microsoft. We've also been on AWS, spending a shit ton of money, for a long time. And as whelmingness goes, my personal experience with AWS has remained squarely in the "under-" camp. I am not an executive, or director, or anyone with any political or financial pull. I am a plain engineer. Yet Google folk came to our aid, quickly, when we needed it, without needing to stump up buckets of cash or wait for someone somewhere to take our ticket.
  - rodgerd 10y ago
    A two hour old account created specifically to take a jab? I wonder what you should be disclosing.
0xmohit 10y ago
Well, AWS has only billing and account related support for free. Any other support is, of course, paid. And it'd be best to avoid commenting on their free support.
13498RtgbDwl 10y ago
I'll toss my personal experiences in as well: we pay Google for support at the 'Gold' level[0] and we've been satisfied with the support they've provided. We've only had a few issues but they've gotten back to us quickly and it's been easy to access their technical staff. -- [0] https://cloud.google.com/support/ https://cloud.google.com/support/
user5994461 10y ago
> IIRC I think I have seen some people here argue it is because they have close to no customer support. Assuming that this is true, having no customer support is still better than the AWS support ;)

vgt 10y ago

Our support folks can comment here, but I would disagree with that point. Our support org is massive, there are varying tiers levels of Support SCE/CRE/SRE/SWE-level of support, all the way up to [0]. I'll also comment that Google's Eng/PM org is very engaged. It's not unusual for an engineer in charge of a service to help resolve a customer an issue. [0] https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/introducing-a-new-era-of-customer-support-Google-Customer-Reliability-Engineering.html https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/introducing-a-n... (work on Google Cloud but do not get paid to post here)

kuschku 10y ago
> It's not unusual for an engineer in charge of a service to help resolve a customer an issue. This is not related to Google Cloud, but to GSuite: Or, if you get an engineer on the phone, through the support number, they just insult you, and hang up on you, as has happened to me once (back when the free tier of GSuite was still a thing).
- vgt 10y ago
  That's unacceptable anywhere. I know Google support spends gobs of time quantifying customer success and happiness, gets measured and rewarded by these numbers. Nature of support anywhere is that sadly you'll always have some folks with a bad experience, all you can do is try to make it right by all.
StreamBright 10y ago
I am not sure that you can really use the size of your support org when talking about customer experience. Why don't you come up with a 3rd party customer survey about how your customers are happy with you compare to Amazon? If you are absolutely certain that your support is great it would prove the point.
- vgt 10y ago
  I agree, size of support org is probably not directly correlated to quality. I was mostly responding to parent, who made the argument that Google can afford to be inexpensive due to lack of investment in the support org. I do assure you that Google Cloud invests a whole lot of time and money thinking about customer happiness, as should all organizations. In the public cloud business, customer happiness is everything.
ignoramous 10y ago
> It's not unusual for an engineer in charge of a service to help resolve a customer an issue. This is the norm with AWS, in case you didn't know. Like someone pointed out, having a deeply engrained customer-focussed culture is different from having a massive support org that quantifies customer happiness as datapoints on a review board somewhere in cozy SV offices.
- vgt 10y ago
  I actually was not comparing Google to Amazon here, apologies if you got that from my post. I was mostly responding to the parent, whose argument was that Google is so much more inexpensive than AWS because Google doesn't invest in support. My experience has been the opposite. I am also not going to get into a discussion with an AWS employee about culture health between the two organizations. Both are trying to do it right for the customers, and both have unique challenges, regardless of the amount of coziness of their offices :) It's unfair to paint Google as "out of touch" and "not customer focused", just like it is unfair to bring up horror stories about Amazon culture, especially if you're employed by a competitor. Apologies, again, but are you an AWS employee? I don't want to inaccurately label you as such, but your posts hint at it. (work at Google Cloud)
  - ignoramous 10y ago
    Perhaps I read too much into something you didn't even mean to compare. Sorry about that. Thanks for clarifying statements and generally taking time to respond throughout the thread. I work for Amazon, yes.

jacques_chester 10y ago

> they have close to no customer support. In the last three days I have been able, in my day job, to personally ask a Google PM to pull Google Cloud engineers into a shared slack channel to help. It took us longer to set up the slack permissions for the googlers to join than it took for Google folk to identify who to pull in.

delifaz27 10y ago
You failed to mention you are a major partner of Google Cloud. So the average customer probably should not expect the same response.
- jacques_chester 10y ago
  For those who are wondering, I work for Pivotal. We are also a major partner of Microsoft. We've also been on AWS, spending a shit ton of money, for a long time. And as whelmingness goes, my personal experience with AWS has remained squarely in the "under-" camp. I am not an executive, or director, or anyone with any political or financial pull. I am a plain engineer. Yet Google folk came to our aid, quickly, when we needed it, without needing to stump up buckets of cash or wait for someone somewhere to take our ticket.
- rodgerd 10y ago
  A two hour old account created specifically to take a jab? I wonder what you should be disclosing.

0xmohit 10y ago

Well, AWS has only billing and account related support for free. Any other support is, of course, paid. And it'd be best to avoid commenting on their free support.

13498RtgbDwl 10y ago

I'll toss my personal experiences in as well: we pay Google for support at the 'Gold' level[0] and we've been satisfied with the support they've provided. We've only had a few issues but they've gotten back to us quickly and it's been easy to access their technical staff. -- [0] https://cloud.google.com/support/ https://cloud.google.com/support/

user5994461 10y ago

> IIRC I think I have seen some people here argue it is because they have close to no customer support. Assuming that this is true, having no customer support is still better than the AWS support ;)