6 ms·

How much does Google Cloud spend on marketing and sales of its services, how much business do they lose from companies who believe that Google could shut down t

How much does Google Cloud spend on marketing and sales of its services, how much business do they lose from companies who believe that Google could shut down their services in a few years? How much would they have spent on maintaining this service? I can tell you, from my experience at mid-market size non-tech clients looking to move to the cloud, that Google's reputation for shutting down services is known and is a negative. AWS' reputation for leaving services alive is also known, and is a positive. When companies buy software, they don't want to have to worry about the future- they just want it to work. "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" was a big driving force for IBM's success. "No one ever got fired for choosing AWS" seems to be true these days. If you want that phrase to be "No one ever got fired for choosing Google Cloud"- you probably shouldn't deprecate services like that. I wonder if anyone got fired for choosing Google Cloud, after Google shuts down one of their services?

FmrAMZN_TA 9y ago
Ever? What if they had a 10 year deprecation policy?
- compumike 9y ago
  10 years would be a reasonable good start for a deprecation policy for an API-providing infrastructure company. It is not uncommon to have 5-year-old systems in production, and a factor of two above that sounds like a good minimum.
vgt 9y ago
Let me respectfully rephrase your argument. Despite parent's logical argument and evidence, and despite further evidence that Google doesn't really shut down Enterprise services at industry-irregular rates, market narrative has been defined (mostly by Readergate), and you are more inclined to accept said narrative? Alternatively, is there sufficient evidence beyond "market narrative" and Readergate that has allowed you to reach your conclusions? (work at G)
- kingbirdy 9y ago
  One well reasoned comment on HN won't change the entire market's perspective.
  - vgt 9y ago
    I agree wholeheartedly. My argument is that there is not sufficient evidence to claim that "Google shuts things down nilly-willy" within the context of B2B (conflation with B2C is the real issue here). Rational thinkers should be swayed by evidence, rather than "market perspective", especially within the context of what boulos posted. For some perspective on "market perspective", see [0]: https://twitter.com/gigabarb/status/839536072698712064 https://twitter.com/gigabarb/status/839536072698712064 (work at G)
    - Denzel 9y ago
      That's the problem. Humans don't respond to logic, they respond to emotion. And every time you try to argue logically, it comes across as tone deaf. I have a personal interest in GC, however, in my previous day jobs I've shipped real products with AWS. And in my time with AWS... I can't remember anything important (or unimportant) being shutdown. I can't shake the feeling, however wrong you believe the impression may be, that Google flails around in the dark while AWS hums along quietly.
- phpnode 9y ago
  Marketing is all about confidence, regardless of the facts the public perception is that google shuts down services with wild abandon, that is a perception google needs to work to fix and your response merely confirms it
- saurik 9y ago
  > ...mostly by Readergate... Oh, come on... seriously? This argument is trotted out every single time Google shuts down something: "you are still upset about Google Reader". No: we are upset about all of those other things that get shut down, and people from Google shifting blame to Reader over and over and over again is nonsensical at this point: there are so many many examples of things being shut down, and Reader was probably the least interesting to those of us who care about this sort of thing :(. Here is something I wrote four years ago when someone (as from Google!) tried to pull the "you are just upset about Google Reader" argument. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6518473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6518473 ================ They've shut down much more than Reader (seriously, who said anything about Reader? was that even a service a developer could rely on?). Even APIs they don't shut down, such as their OpenID login stack, they routinely replace (dropping a lot of the maintenance and support, which leads to weird failures) with "exciting new APIs" that have no migration path, such as with G+ Login (I am thankfully safe from this issue, as I did something crazy with Portable Contacts that have me Google user IDs that I started storing before we even knew what they meant; so, to be clear: I have very little personal axe to grind on this, but others should be wary). They thankfully decided to just go commercial-ish with Translate, but the same can't be said about Charts (which had a long deprecation window and a replacement, but the replacement is a fundamentally different kind of API that has different browser requirements and even different charting capabilities). They also happily will just shut down things like Google Checkout and offer no replacement at all for key use cases like "sell a physical product" (if you sell digital goods, you might be able to switch to Google Wallet Objects, an "exciting new API" released a couple weeks before Checkout was deprecated). Google Checkout was certainly also targetted at enterprises, had a clear business model behind it, and had existed since 2006: everyone who built on that one (again, not me: I avoided Checkout like the plague) got only six months to migrate to a different provider (and figure out how they are going to handle any refund requests from recent customers, which will surely be horribly irritating as they won't be able to just tell Checkout to refund the transaction anymore). There is simply a patterned lack of care for people who may have built things on their stacks. (Yes, some services have deprecation policies, but let's not forget that those guarantees were themselves attempts to regain faith due to a previous round of services that had been axed with little warning ;P. After the anger died down from that they started reversing course, shortening or removing the policy entirely after the previous guarantees expire. I can only imagine the people who keep citing these deprecation policies don't have much memory of how this has all been going down over the past few years ;P.) http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2012/04/changes-to-deprecation-policies-and-api.html http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2012/04/changes-to-depr... Yes: you might be able to find alternatives to migrate towards... but if, by just acknowledging this pattern, you could avoid that bullet--which could easily come at the "least convenient moment" (such as when you now have some competition out of nowhere while attempting to launch a new product and raise finding), requiring you to suddenly drop everything for a couple weeks coming up with a new implementation of key infrastructure before the clock runs out--why wouldn't you? ================ Two years ago someone (not from Google, this time) used that argument against someone again, and I linked to my earlier comment. A few people downvoted my link, and I responded with the following (which was upvoted, and my link was also upvoted back to 0). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10330249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10330249 ================ Multiple people (now three!) have downvoted this, but the idea that everyone who talks about Google service closures is complaining about one specific service--Google Reader--is the "meme" that we should all be quite tired of, as it is trotted out like a broken record every single time anyone points out reservations about Google's track record: no matter the context, no matter how many services have been shut down or cut down since, no matter what announcements Google makes about limiting their policies, and no matter whether the person mentioned Google Reader or not... it is even used against people like myself, who had absolutely no specific interest in Google Reader in the first place :/. It is nothing more than a knee-jerk way to dismiss a rather easily defended position (due to the large number of closures that have been documented, ones that are more extreme or would have been considered less likely than Google Reader) by stereotyping someone's argument down to not just a "strawman" (an argument that is easily defeated), but essentially a purposely broken and laughable version of their argument so as to purposely ill-inform other people (which I feel the need to separate from a "strawman", as the goal is not to defeat the argument but to belittle the opponent). It is frankly one of the more underhanded argumentation tactics that people seem to enjoy defending here. The reality is that Reader is a non-issue for most people here, as it isn't something you likely built your business or infrastructure around (and to the ones who ended up indirectly relying on it, that is a stretch to blame them for), but when Google randomly shuts down, cuts down, or entirely reboots APIs and services--something they have done many times, at the extremely painful end with things like Checkout and Login, but also with things such as App Engine or Charts--the fact that people seem to seriously have just forgotten how recent these things have been is distressing, and is made all the worse by people who insist on perpetuating "you are just whining about Reader" lie :/.
boulos 9y ago
Trust me, I know. I do agree with the folks that argued that security compromise is worse than deprecation though. My counter-argument is the same as yours: find someone to handle it, for as long as it makes sense (I personally jumped on a grenade for a short period of time, but that's not enough). As the commenter below argues, that's probably not indefinite, but it is likely greater than 1 year. Quite frankly, this service should probably have never gone to GA. Plenty of products don't work, but instead of just going out into the marketplace to see what sticks, we should have what it takes to say "This isn't ready". (We have this now, we didn't then). I appreciate you being patient with us, and understand how this affects your decisions going forward.
- nojvek 9y ago
  Totally agree. Seems Google wants to be in exploring mode at the same time as conquer the world mode. It needs to have strict communication with its users. I like that they have some sort of focus and trim junk but they have to really communicate that with their users. You have to be upfront on how many of your API's are in beta mode. I remember Gmail being in beta for 5 years. May be this should be the new bar. If you can't get your shit working in 5 years then can it. If you can and enough users use if then support it for a lifetime.

FmrAMZN_TA 9y ago

Ever? What if they had a 10 year deprecation policy?

compumike 9y ago
10 years would be a reasonable good start for a deprecation policy for an API-providing infrastructure company. It is not uncommon to have 5-year-old systems in production, and a factor of two above that sounds like a good minimum.

vgt 9y ago

Let me respectfully rephrase your argument. Despite parent's logical argument and evidence, and despite further evidence that Google doesn't really shut down Enterprise services at industry-irregular rates, market narrative has been defined (mostly by Readergate), and you are more inclined to accept said narrative? Alternatively, is there sufficient evidence beyond "market narrative" and Readergate that has allowed you to reach your conclusions? (work at G)

kingbirdy 9y ago
One well reasoned comment on HN won't change the entire market's perspective.
- vgt 9y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly. My argument is that there is not sufficient evidence to claim that "Google shuts things down nilly-willy" within the context of B2B (conflation with B2C is the real issue here). Rational thinkers should be swayed by evidence, rather than "market perspective", especially within the context of what boulos posted. For some perspective on "market perspective", see [0]: https://twitter.com/gigabarb/status/839536072698712064 https://twitter.com/gigabarb/status/839536072698712064 (work at G)
  - Denzel 9y ago
    That's the problem. Humans don't respond to logic, they respond to emotion. And every time you try to argue logically, it comes across as tone deaf. I have a personal interest in GC, however, in my previous day jobs I've shipped real products with AWS. And in my time with AWS... I can't remember anything important (or unimportant) being shutdown. I can't shake the feeling, however wrong you believe the impression may be, that Google flails around in the dark while AWS hums along quietly.
phpnode 9y ago
Marketing is all about confidence, regardless of the facts the public perception is that google shuts down services with wild abandon, that is a perception google needs to work to fix and your response merely confirms it
saurik 9y ago
> ...mostly by Readergate... Oh, come on... seriously? This argument is trotted out every single time Google shuts down something: "you are still upset about Google Reader". No: we are upset about all of those other things that get shut down, and people from Google shifting blame to Reader over and over and over again is nonsensical at this point: there are so many many examples of things being shut down, and Reader was probably the least interesting to those of us who care about this sort of thing :(. Here is something I wrote four years ago when someone (as from Google!) tried to pull the "you are just upset about Google Reader" argument. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6518473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6518473 ================ They've shut down much more than Reader (seriously, who said anything about Reader? was that even a service a developer could rely on?). Even APIs they don't shut down, such as their OpenID login stack, they routinely replace (dropping a lot of the maintenance and support, which leads to weird failures) with "exciting new APIs" that have no migration path, such as with G+ Login (I am thankfully safe from this issue, as I did something crazy with Portable Contacts that have me Google user IDs that I started storing before we even knew what they meant; so, to be clear: I have very little personal axe to grind on this, but others should be wary). They thankfully decided to just go commercial-ish with Translate, but the same can't be said about Charts (which had a long deprecation window and a replacement, but the replacement is a fundamentally different kind of API that has different browser requirements and even different charting capabilities). They also happily will just shut down things like Google Checkout and offer no replacement at all for key use cases like "sell a physical product" (if you sell digital goods, you might be able to switch to Google Wallet Objects, an "exciting new API" released a couple weeks before Checkout was deprecated). Google Checkout was certainly also targetted at enterprises, had a clear business model behind it, and had existed since 2006: everyone who built on that one (again, not me: I avoided Checkout like the plague) got only six months to migrate to a different provider (and figure out how they are going to handle any refund requests from recent customers, which will surely be horribly irritating as they won't be able to just tell Checkout to refund the transaction anymore). There is simply a patterned lack of care for people who may have built things on their stacks. (Yes, some services have deprecation policies, but let's not forget that those guarantees were themselves attempts to regain faith due to a previous round of services that had been axed with little warning ;P. After the anger died down from that they started reversing course, shortening or removing the policy entirely after the previous guarantees expire. I can only imagine the people who keep citing these deprecation policies don't have much memory of how this has all been going down over the past few years ;P.) http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2012/04/changes-to-deprecation-policies-and-api.html http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2012/04/changes-to-depr... Yes: you might be able to find alternatives to migrate towards... but if, by just acknowledging this pattern, you could avoid that bullet--which could easily come at the "least convenient moment" (such as when you now have some competition out of nowhere while attempting to launch a new product and raise finding), requiring you to suddenly drop everything for a couple weeks coming up with a new implementation of key infrastructure before the clock runs out--why wouldn't you? ================ Two years ago someone (not from Google, this time) used that argument against someone again, and I linked to my earlier comment. A few people downvoted my link, and I responded with the following (which was upvoted, and my link was also upvoted back to 0). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10330249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10330249 ================ Multiple people (now three!) have downvoted this, but the idea that everyone who talks about Google service closures is complaining about one specific service--Google Reader--is the "meme" that we should all be quite tired of, as it is trotted out like a broken record every single time anyone points out reservations about Google's track record: no matter the context, no matter how many services have been shut down or cut down since, no matter what announcements Google makes about limiting their policies, and no matter whether the person mentioned Google Reader or not... it is even used against people like myself, who had absolutely no specific interest in Google Reader in the first place :/. It is nothing more than a knee-jerk way to dismiss a rather easily defended position (due to the large number of closures that have been documented, ones that are more extreme or would have been considered less likely than Google Reader) by stereotyping someone's argument down to not just a "strawman" (an argument that is easily defeated), but essentially a purposely broken and laughable version of their argument so as to purposely ill-inform other people (which I feel the need to separate from a "strawman", as the goal is not to defeat the argument but to belittle the opponent). It is frankly one of the more underhanded argumentation tactics that people seem to enjoy defending here. The reality is that Reader is a non-issue for most people here, as it isn't something you likely built your business or infrastructure around (and to the ones who ended up indirectly relying on it, that is a stretch to blame them for), but when Google randomly shuts down, cuts down, or entirely reboots APIs and services--something they have done many times, at the extremely painful end with things like Checkout and Login, but also with things such as App Engine or Charts--the fact that people seem to seriously have just forgotten how recent these things have been is distressing, and is made all the worse by people who insist on perpetuating "you are just whining about Reader" lie :/.

boulos 9y ago

Trust me, I know. I do agree with the folks that argued that security compromise is worse than deprecation though. My counter-argument is the same as yours: find someone to handle it, for as long as it makes sense (I personally jumped on a grenade for a short period of time, but that's not enough). As the commenter below argues, that's probably not indefinite, but it is likely greater than 1 year. Quite frankly, this service should probably have never gone to GA. Plenty of products don't work, but instead of just going out into the marketplace to see what sticks, we should have what it takes to say "This isn't ready". (We have this now, we didn't then). I appreciate you being patient with us, and understand how this affects your decisions going forward.

nojvek 9y ago
Totally agree. Seems Google wants to be in exploring mode at the same time as conquer the world mode. It needs to have strict communication with its users. I like that they have some sort of focus and trim junk but they have to really communicate that with their users. You have to be upfront on how many of your API's are in beta mode. I remember Gmail being in beta for 5 years. May be this should be the new bar. If you can't get your shit working in 5 years then can it. If you can and enough users use if then support it for a lifetime.