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AWS is actually a pretty high margin business (~25% operating margin is public, GM is not publicly known but good guesswork puts it ~50%). So, there's some har
by Nacraile 10y ago
AWS is actually a pretty high margin business (~25% operating margin is public, GM is not publicly known but good guesswork puts it ~50%). So, there's some hard data showing a lot of room for price competition.
If you'll allow me to get a bit more wibbly: I've been an engineer at both companies, and from a technical perspective, Google is much better at this stuff. In order to provide their own services, they've been operating at much larger scale for much longer than anyone else. There's a pretty long record of the new hot thing in the industry being something Google's been doing on the order of a decade. The basic deficit in experience is exacerbated by Amazon's relatively poor retention of its best talent.
Putting all of this together, it is my expectation that Google be able to build better services faster, and to operate them more efficiently. AWS started with a massive first mover advantage, but my expectation is that in the long run Google will have little difficulty closing that gap and pulling ahead, should it wish to.
- justicezyx 10y ago> AWS is actually a pretty high margin business Correct, see how much profit AWS contributed to Amazon in the past quarters. > I've been an engineer at both companies Same here, so I offer my perspective. > Google is much better at this stuff Not much, but noticeably better across the board. Overall it's substantially better when combine everything together. But as others point out, the technical superiority does not account 100% of the quality of product offering. Being in 2 companies, I think you have similar experiences. Otherwise, GCP should already eat AWS in 2012. > Google will have little difficulty closing that gap and pulling ahead I think so. But my expectation is that Google needs operate Cloud as its top priority, and treat AWS as a tougher competitor than MSFT in the search/browser war. The thing is, that Cloud is a much much bigger market than internet ads. The race will be long and difficult to predict. Amazon is a much more formidable competitor than MSFT. They have proven to be the best in retaining customer and build a brand. They are also extremely fast in execution. And they are not afraid to try crazy ideas and abandon them if proven wrong.
- mattnewton 10y agoPlus they have a real customer service culture, something Google seems allergic to. Edit: posts further down from mine seem to suggest my sentiment is outdated and Google takes cloud support very seriously in their teirs. https://cloud.google.com/support/ https://cloud.google.com/support/
- derekperkins 10y agoI disagree with the edit. While they have been responsive, they have been completely useless on my Gold package. The individual teams however have been fantastic, available on both Slack and Google Groups.
- blahi 10y ago>Amazon is a much more formidable competitor than MSFT. I don't know about that. Going further, majority of the spend is going to come from established businesses. They need software and not just infrastructure. And msft has those accounts. Has the reseller network. Has the software. I really can't think of any good b2b/productivity software that google wrote. Probably they haven't tried, but looking at what they announced last - data studio, survey and optimize - the talk was like they were super serious about it. The result is very, very far from the competition.
- user5994461 10y ago> I really can't think of any good b2b/productivity software that google wrote The only thing I can think of is the google apps for business (Gmail/Docs).
- antaviana 10y agoIt would be desirable that Google has a decent margin in its GCE operations, otherwise there is a high risk that they cut it back or even shut it down.
- hinkley 10y agoI know Google and a couple other companies are designing their own hardware to reduce overheads like power and square footage. Does Amazon do the same?
- discodave 10y agoAWS has publicly stated that they build their own hardware for a few years now.
- ranman 10y ago>Google is much better at this stuff. Also worked at both companies. Google is not better. Google is a retirement home for engineers. Few creative things happen there (anymore--wasn't always true). If GCP is so star spangled awesome why is it still so far behind AWS? Why did AWS start literally 10 years before GCP? Google reacts to competition while Amazon proactively responds to customers -- this, as always, is the difference that allows amazon to succeed.
- vgt 10y agoYou are currently employed by AWS, but I don't see a history of you working at Google. A "bias" disclosure would be helpful here. (work at Google Cloud and don't get paid to post on HN)
- ranman 10y agoWorked on google mars in mt view in 2011. Internship. Totally possible I didn't get to see the full benefit of the culture there. I have however seen friends disappear into google over the years and emerge with a distaste -- obviously the same can be said for amazon. A constant bias disclosure is cumbersome but you're right that it would have been helpful, you've forgotten it on some of your posts as well. My comments were off base sorry, obviously google does a ton of cool stuff. I let my emotions around this ridiculously biased post get in the way of my reason.