8 ms·

tldr; competition is good. Google Cloud UI is vastly superior to AWS. It's clear to me AWS didn't put a lot of effort into their interface, Google console is n

by aikah 10y ago

tldr; competition is good. Google Cloud UI is vastly superior to AWS. It's clear to me AWS didn't put a lot of effort into their interface, Google console is nice too in order to quickly experiment with the platform. On the other hand, it seems to me that AWS is still cheaper than GCloud right now.

bduerst 10y ago
>AWS is still cheaper than GCloud right now How so? I thought this was brought up just a week ago saying GCloud is consistently cheaper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12993021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12993021
- ranman 10y ago
  That article had a unique relationship with reality. A few of my comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12998170 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12998170 (I work for AWS)
  - bduerst 10y ago
    I definitely agree on your critique of the bandwidth claims, but the gist I got from that article was that custom instances outcompete AWS's reserved instances on price - i.e. per CPU and per GB memory, GCloud is cheaper. Is that not true?
    - ranman 10y ago
      Actually I do think that GCE offers cheaper instances, but the 50% overall price reduction claim is unsubstantiated. The author compared completely different instance types. Monthly discounts does make GCE cheaper but for many instance types without that discount it's actually more expensive on GCE.
      - dekhn 10y ago
        Don't forget, GCE VMs also support per-minute pricing while EC2 is still per-hour (don't think that changed in the past few months, happy to be corrected). many users spin up a VM, use it for 20 minutes, then kill it (all the data remains in persistent disk).
        user5994461 10y ago
        Author of the polemic post here! :D @ranman: You could start by disclosing that you work for AWS ;) I'll stand by my word. I can present the pricing comparison at reinvent 2017 if you'd like. 1) The equivalent instances are cheaper on Google. 2) Automatic discount is significantly superior and more customer friendly that reserved instances. 3) Google is faster or more flexible, usually both. That means that when you have specifications to achieve (IOPS/bandwidth/SSD), AWS has to get severely over-provisioned compared to Google cloud. 1 + 2 + 3 = https://thehftguy.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/aws-vs-gce-pricing-summary1.png?w=809 https://thehftguy.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/aws-vs-gce-pri... the actual difference I expect on the bills depending on the type of workload ;)
        ranman 10y ago
        I disclosed in the parent post and the linked post. Not sure what more you want me to do there sorry.
        obulpathi 10y ago
        I completely agree with this. But, what I found more impressive about Google Cloud is that it requires a far fewer number of people to get things done compared to AWS. AWS believes in providing fundamental building blocks rather than frameworks. It takes a lot of time, money, skills, expertise and people to make it work. Google Cloud provides frameworks which are easy to use, secure by default, does not require tuning or turning knobs, high performance, scale automatically (or automagically) and are ready to use. It is an impressive feat that Snapchat, a 25 Billion dollar company, runs on Google Cloud with 2 part-time DevOps engineers and recently Pokemon Go was able to scale to facebook level user engagement in a mere month time period with 4 backend engineers (and of course with lot of help from Google). Things like these are impossible to achieve with AWS. Bottom line, if you want to get something done, Google Cloud will get you there in a fraction of time compared to AWS and can scale way better than what AWS can, at half of the AWS's price.
hueving 10y ago
UI doesn't really matter for people with enough instances to care about money. Nobody is going to blow $1,000/mo because the interface is nicer.
- xyzzyz 10y ago
  The way it often works out is first you chose your provider because the interface is nicer, then your needs slowly grow, and at some point you you're blowing $1,000/mo on a given provider just because it had nicer interface a few years before.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Really? Because slack is IRC with a nicer UI. There are many examples of this. Executives love slick UIs and flashy dashboards. Executives have a lot of power.
  - govg 10y ago
    Should we be looking at Slack as an example here? Their interface is necessary for people to use it, if your company uses Slack you will have to use their UI/UX. Whereas for AWS, your engineers are more likely to make the call on UI/UX, and not the executives.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    Are your executives launching servers? Do they care about their IDE's UI too?
    - brianwawok 10y ago
      Executives play with all kinds of tech and have all kinds of power. What world do you live in that a random dev picks the cloud provider for a company?
  - i_are_smart 10y ago
pbreit 10y ago
Does Google have a $5-10/month "normal" offering (ie, a plain ole server)?
- dimfeld 10y ago
  The closest it comes are the f1-micro and g1-small instance types, at $4 and $13 per month, respectively, with a full month's usage. These seem most comparable to AWS's t2.nano and t2.small types though it's not an exact comparison. And you still have to attach a network drive, which may go against your definition of "plain ole server." GCE Pricing Page: https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing

by aikah 10y ago

bduerst 10y ago

>AWS is still cheaper than GCloud right now How so? I thought this was brought up just a week ago saying GCloud is consistently cheaper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12993021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12993021

ranman 10y ago
That article had a unique relationship with reality. A few of my comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12998170 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12998170 (I work for AWS)
- bduerst 10y ago
  I definitely agree on your critique of the bandwidth claims, but the gist I got from that article was that custom instances outcompete AWS's reserved instances on price - i.e. per CPU and per GB memory, GCloud is cheaper. Is that not true?
  - ranman 10y ago
    Actually I do think that GCE offers cheaper instances, but the 50% overall price reduction claim is unsubstantiated. The author compared completely different instance types. Monthly discounts does make GCE cheaper but for many instance types without that discount it's actually more expensive on GCE.
    - dekhn 10y ago
      Don't forget, GCE VMs also support per-minute pricing while EC2 is still per-hour (don't think that changed in the past few months, happy to be corrected). many users spin up a VM, use it for 20 minutes, then kill it (all the data remains in persistent disk).
      - user5994461 10y ago
        Author of the polemic post here! :D @ranman: You could start by disclosing that you work for AWS ;) I'll stand by my word. I can present the pricing comparison at reinvent 2017 if you'd like. 1) The equivalent instances are cheaper on Google. 2) Automatic discount is significantly superior and more customer friendly that reserved instances. 3) Google is faster or more flexible, usually both. That means that when you have specifications to achieve (IOPS/bandwidth/SSD), AWS has to get severely over-provisioned compared to Google cloud. 1 + 2 + 3 = https://thehftguy.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/aws-vs-gce-pricing-summary1.png?w=809 https://thehftguy.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/aws-vs-gce-pri... the actual difference I expect on the bills depending on the type of workload ;)
        ranman 10y ago
        I disclosed in the parent post and the linked post. Not sure what more you want me to do there sorry.
        obulpathi 10y ago
        I completely agree with this. But, what I found more impressive about Google Cloud is that it requires a far fewer number of people to get things done compared to AWS. AWS believes in providing fundamental building blocks rather than frameworks. It takes a lot of time, money, skills, expertise and people to make it work. Google Cloud provides frameworks which are easy to use, secure by default, does not require tuning or turning knobs, high performance, scale automatically (or automagically) and are ready to use. It is an impressive feat that Snapchat, a 25 Billion dollar company, runs on Google Cloud with 2 part-time DevOps engineers and recently Pokemon Go was able to scale to facebook level user engagement in a mere month time period with 4 backend engineers (and of course with lot of help from Google). Things like these are impossible to achieve with AWS. Bottom line, if you want to get something done, Google Cloud will get you there in a fraction of time compared to AWS and can scale way better than what AWS can, at half of the AWS's price.

hueving 10y ago

UI doesn't really matter for people with enough instances to care about money. Nobody is going to blow $1,000/mo because the interface is nicer.

xyzzyz 10y ago
The way it often works out is first you chose your provider because the interface is nicer, then your needs slowly grow, and at some point you you're blowing $1,000/mo on a given provider just because it had nicer interface a few years before.
brianwawok 10y ago
Really? Because slack is IRC with a nicer UI. There are many examples of this. Executives love slick UIs and flashy dashboards. Executives have a lot of power.
- govg 10y ago
  Should we be looking at Slack as an example here? Their interface is necessary for people to use it, if your company uses Slack you will have to use their UI/UX. Whereas for AWS, your engineers are more likely to make the call on UI/UX, and not the executives.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- paulddraper 10y ago
  Are your executives launching servers? Do they care about their IDE's UI too?
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    Executives play with all kinds of tech and have all kinds of power. What world do you live in that a random dev picks the cloud provider for a company?
- i_are_smart 10y ago

pbreit 10y ago

Does Google have a $5-10/month "normal" offering (ie, a plain ole server)?

dimfeld 10y ago
The closest it comes are the f1-micro and g1-small instance types, at $4 and $13 per month, respectively, with a full month's usage. These seem most comparable to AWS's t2.nano and t2.small types though it's not an exact comparison. And you still have to attach a network drive, which may go against your definition of "plain ole server." GCE Pricing Page: https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing