4 ms·

I'd suggest that's easy, Google are running a loss-leader to get you onto their platform. In terms of market share on cloud computing platforms, Google is curr

I'd suggest that's easy, Google are running a loss-leader to get you onto their platform. In terms of market share on cloud computing platforms, Google is currently running third to AWS and Azure, so it makes sense for them to take some short term losses to help build their position. Whether they will maintain that kind of pricing in the long term, remains to be seen.

madiathomas 9y ago
I doubt it is a loss leader. That's a fair price to pay for the kind of hosting I require. Local web hosting companies who are profitable charge less than what Google is charging me.
- raesene9 9y ago
  if they provide you with $300 of free credit how can that be anything other than a loss leader? They're providing you something for free, which costs them money to provide...
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > They're providing you something for free, which costs them money to provide... At Google's scale, unless you mine bitcoins and actually use CPU/GPU time, the money Google actually spends on your tiny $300 free trial is maybe worth a dollar or two (and if they run free trials on machines that are paid off in terms of taxes, the only "expenses" are a tiny tiny sliver of maintenance - at Google scale network connectivity is basically free). Cloud providers, especially for 24/7 running services, are a total rip-off even compared to managed servers, and deploying your own bare metal will blow any cloud calculation away when you're getting serious (> 200GB RAM, 50+ cores). The real strength of cloud is when you need extremely high computing power for very short time (e.g. heavy software builds, occasional transcoding, ML training).
    - raesene9 9y ago
      that's still a loss leader... And it's opportunity cost we're looking at here. It may only cost them a small amount to provide the resources (although that ignores the cost of developing/maintaining the services) but if they provide $300 of credit to one party that's resources they're not selling for $300 to someone else.
manigandham 9y ago
Google has been running the most advanced cloud far longer than the others, and has the efficiency and costs to show for it, which they pass on to their customers. They're definitely being aggressive with pricing but they're still making money. Their pricing is definitely way better to deal with than AWS or Azure.
- raesene9 9y ago
  Advanced I'd suggest is subjective, however Google cloud has not been running longer than AWS (GCP started in 2008 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cloud_Platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cloud_Platform), AWS started in 2006 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Web_Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Web_Services), with Azure coming along a bit after those two in 2010 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Azure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Azure)
  - j_s 9y ago
    I'm giving OP the benefit of the doubt, assuming they're including the time Google itself was the only user of their cloud. Still not sure how that timeline compares to the Amazon-only pre-AWS.
  - manigandham 9y ago
    I'm not talking about their public cloud offering but rather their entire operational experience as one of the first companies to truly use next-gen architecture to build their software and data centers. They're just now offering the same tech to the public with GCP products like Compute Engine, Spanner, BigQuery, etc. which shows in the level of sophistication and performance compared to Azure and AWS.
    - raesene9 9y ago
      I'm afraid that all feels very subjective to me, Microsoft were providing online services before Google even existed as a company, so I'm not sure how Google could have more operational experience of online services. You obviously feel that Google's services are more advanced than Microsoft's and Amazon's but from a market share perspective they're clearly running third to those two.

madiathomas 9y ago

I doubt it is a loss leader. That's a fair price to pay for the kind of hosting I require. Local web hosting companies who are profitable charge less than what Google is charging me.

raesene9 9y ago
if they provide you with $300 of free credit how can that be anything other than a loss leader? They're providing you something for free, which costs them money to provide...
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > They're providing you something for free, which costs them money to provide... At Google's scale, unless you mine bitcoins and actually use CPU/GPU time, the money Google actually spends on your tiny $300 free trial is maybe worth a dollar or two (and if they run free trials on machines that are paid off in terms of taxes, the only "expenses" are a tiny tiny sliver of maintenance - at Google scale network connectivity is basically free). Cloud providers, especially for 24/7 running services, are a total rip-off even compared to managed servers, and deploying your own bare metal will blow any cloud calculation away when you're getting serious (> 200GB RAM, 50+ cores). The real strength of cloud is when you need extremely high computing power for very short time (e.g. heavy software builds, occasional transcoding, ML training).
  - raesene9 9y ago
    that's still a loss leader... And it's opportunity cost we're looking at here. It may only cost them a small amount to provide the resources (although that ignores the cost of developing/maintaining the services) but if they provide $300 of credit to one party that's resources they're not selling for $300 to someone else.

manigandham 9y ago

Google has been running the most advanced cloud far longer than the others, and has the efficiency and costs to show for it, which they pass on to their customers. They're definitely being aggressive with pricing but they're still making money. Their pricing is definitely way better to deal with than AWS or Azure.

raesene9 9y ago
Advanced I'd suggest is subjective, however Google cloud has not been running longer than AWS (GCP started in 2008 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cloud_Platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cloud_Platform), AWS started in 2006 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Web_Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Web_Services), with Azure coming along a bit after those two in 2010 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Azure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Azure)
- j_s 9y ago
  I'm giving OP the benefit of the doubt, assuming they're including the time Google itself was the only user of their cloud. Still not sure how that timeline compares to the Amazon-only pre-AWS.
- manigandham 9y ago
  I'm not talking about their public cloud offering but rather their entire operational experience as one of the first companies to truly use next-gen architecture to build their software and data centers. They're just now offering the same tech to the public with GCP products like Compute Engine, Spanner, BigQuery, etc. which shows in the level of sophistication and performance compared to Azure and AWS.
  - raesene9 9y ago
    I'm afraid that all feels very subjective to me, Microsoft were providing online services before Google even existed as a company, so I'm not sure how Google could have more operational experience of online services. You obviously feel that Google's services are more advanced than Microsoft's and Amazon's but from a market share perspective they're clearly running third to those two.