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Disclosure: I work on GCP Thanks for the feedback. As the person that named both products, I can say we spent a ton of time debating this but we felt that the

by deesix 8y ago

Disclosure: I work on GCP Thanks for the feedback. As the person that named both products, I can say we spent a ton of time debating this but we felt that the fact one is an enterprise file share and the other a document database service focused on mobile and web would mean very little conflict for customers. We will keep an eye on any customer confusion it might cause.

ak217 8y ago
Not only is it confusingly similar to other storage products, but the abbreviations collide among all of them. GCF means how many different things now? (I always considered it to mean Google Cloud Functions - kind of an important product.) Don't underestimate the importance of these things. I can't even talk to my colleagues about your products without us all misunderstanding each other.
some_account 8y ago
You made the wrong choice.
pinewurst 8y ago
What about when the names are spoken, especially by non-native English speakers? They're close homonyms.
ttul 8y ago
This will be extremely confusing for Japanese and Korean speakers.
- borplk 8y ago
  This will be extremely confusing for anyone.
- deesix 8y ago
  Disclosure: I work on GCP Thanks for highlighting. We were aware of this and working with the local sales teams to make it as easy as possible.
  - vasco 8y ago
    Even if the products are for different types of customers all of them will still need to click the right one.
- yongjik 8y ago
  Actually, not that much for Korean speakers, because "file" becomes "pa-il" and "fire" becomes "pa-i-eo". (Damn English triphthongs...) Hopefully they won't launch Cloud Pyrestore any time soon...
  - lioeters 8y ago
    Similarly for Japanese, "file" is pronounced/written as "fairu" and "fire" as "faiyaa". If the service docs are translated, then they would look like (and sound as) difference names.
  - nerpderp83 8y ago
    By the heat of the fire, and play their songs from LyreStore. Floating plastic would go in the GyreStore. If you had a bunch muck it would go in MireStore.
- cellularmitosis 8y ago
  I think its worth adding some additional phonetic context around this remark (I made a similar remark and my coworkers thought I was making a racist joke). The reason native Japanese speakers struggle with "R" and "L" sounds is because they just have one phoneme to work with, which sounds (to a native English speaker) like a combination of "R", "L", and "D". If you aren't exposed to phonemes at a young age, it is difficult to expand your set later in life. An analogous difficulty might exist for English speakers if a Chinese company came up with two product names which used the exact same sequence of syllables, but had "tonal" differences in pronunciation.
borplk 8y ago
Spent a ton of time and still decided to stick to names that differ by a single "r vs l" letter. Wow. Don't mean to be rude but go for a walk outside and speak to 3 people outside the bubble.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dymk 8y ago
  You don't see the irony in that statement, as you toss in your low-effort criticism just to stoke the HN feeding frenzy?
  - borplk 8y ago
    > low-effort criticism It's a clear blunt suggestion to get out of their bubble. No one outside Google would hear that explanation and say "Yeah totally makes sense one of them is an enterprise file share and the other a document database service focused on mobile and web, crystal clear and very little confusion.". What more do you want out of my comment for it to not be low effort? Write a 3 page essay about it carefully making a case based on peer reviewed scientific evidence?
    - dymk 8y ago
      You misunderstand, the comment provided no value at all; it’s not that I wanted peer review studies.
- stingraycharles 8y ago
  To be fair, I think “Filestore” in itself is a pretty descriptive name, and the real problem is the name “Firestore”. I can imagine the internal discussion when a bit like that as well, and here we have the result.
- deesix 8y ago
  Disclosure: I work on GCP Thanks for the feedback. We spoke to number of existing GCP customers for feedback, but it's fair to say we can always talk to more non-customers.
oavdeev 8y ago
I mean.. I get it, there isn't a lot to work with, it is a thing that _stores files_ after all, and it most closely resembles a normal filesystem. But it does make GCP's storage product naming even more confusing overall (after "Cloud Storage" vs "Cloud Datastore" mentioned above).
niftich 8y ago
Update the chooser flowchart [1] when it's out of beta or when appropriate. This page also has brief descriptions and comparison tables. [1] https://cloud.google.com/storage-options/ https://cloud.google.com/storage-options/
iagovar 8y ago
I'm non native English speaker and I didn't notice the difference. Please, use useful names that do tell what is it about.
foobiekr 8y ago
What was so special about the name that it was even worth the debate? Why not avoid the problem?
IanCal 8y ago
I mean all of the following in the best possible way: Perhaps also worth looking at the screenshot in the blogpost. You have in there: --- Datastore Storage Filestore --- So, datastore is not storage, nor is filestore. What is it storage storing if not data or files? Why are files not data? I have no idea what should go where. > We know folks need to create, read and write large files with low latency. We also know that film studios and production shops are always looking to render movies and create CGI images faster and more efficiently. So alongside our LA region launch, So I couldn't create, read or write before without low latency? I thought this was already a feature of your other products > we’re pleased to enable these creative projects by bringing file storage capabilities to GCP for the first time with Cloud Filestore. For the first time? I couldn't store files before? I'm not trying to be an arse, but I really don't get from this what the key difference is from everything else you offer.
- derefr 8y ago
  > What is it storage storing if not data or files? Objects. Cloud Storage is the S3 competitor. > Why are files not data? “Data” as in rows in a database. Like Dynamo. Everything on a computer is data. The thing you’ve got to understand is that the terms we use, “objects”, “files”, “data” — these don’t refer to types of data, but rather to access paradigms for data. The semantics of their storage, indexing, mutability, etc. An object is a blob of data named by a key, that you can retrieve entirely, or overwrite entirely, and where usually you automatically get a version history of old versions that have been overwritten that you can retrieve, with a cutoff for automatic GC. “Data” is a structured tuple that a database knows how to index into, and sort by the columns of. You insert rows, update columns of rows by a key, or delete rows by a key. “Files” are seekable streams where you can index anywhere into a file by position and then read(2) or write(2) data at that position, and where other clients can see those updates as soon as you sync(2), without needing to close(2) the file first. All could be used to implement the other (S3 is implemented in terms of Dynamo rows holding chunks of object data, for example.) But each access semantics has use-cases for which it is an impedance match or mismatch.
  - IanCal 8y ago
jedberg 8y ago
Please make sure you read this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17402427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17402427 It explains why this is linguistically bad. Basically, a billion people on this planet don't distinguish between the l and r sounds, so for 1/6 of the planet, these names are identical.
- Gigablah 8y ago
  Native Chinese speaker here. That post is comically wrong. For one thing, you don't pronounce either "file" or "fire" like "filer" or "firer" -- isn't English amazing ;) -- so there's no L/R sound in the first place for us to supposedly confuse.
mandeepj 8y ago
> I can say we spent a ton of time debating this but we felt that the fact one is an enterprise file share and the other a document database service focused on mobile and web would mean very little conflict for customers. How about naming one as Cloud FileStore and other as Cloud DbStore?
kuwze 8y ago
Maybe you could give them pokemon/ikea-like nicknames? Stupid idea, but it might really help people searching for stuff.
bigtones 8y ago
Oh oh, it's already causing a lot of confusion. Just check the 70+ comments in this thread alone hating on the naming and professing their confusion and it's been out less than 12 hours... and that is from a self selecting very tech savvy audience. I think you've got a problem.

by deesix 8y ago

ak217 8y ago

Not only is it confusingly similar to other storage products, but the abbreviations collide among all of them. GCF means how many different things now? (I always considered it to mean Google Cloud Functions - kind of an important product.) Don't underestimate the importance of these things. I can't even talk to my colleagues about your products without us all misunderstanding each other.

some_account 8y ago

You made the wrong choice.

pinewurst 8y ago

What about when the names are spoken, especially by non-native English speakers? They're close homonyms.

ttul 8y ago

This will be extremely confusing for Japanese and Korean speakers.

borplk 8y ago
This will be extremely confusing for anyone.
deesix 8y ago
Disclosure: I work on GCP Thanks for highlighting. We were aware of this and working with the local sales teams to make it as easy as possible.
- vasco 8y ago
  Even if the products are for different types of customers all of them will still need to click the right one.
yongjik 8y ago
Actually, not that much for Korean speakers, because "file" becomes "pa-il" and "fire" becomes "pa-i-eo". (Damn English triphthongs...) Hopefully they won't launch Cloud Pyrestore any time soon...
- lioeters 8y ago
  Similarly for Japanese, "file" is pronounced/written as "fairu" and "fire" as "faiyaa". If the service docs are translated, then they would look like (and sound as) difference names.
- nerpderp83 8y ago
  By the heat of the fire, and play their songs from LyreStore. Floating plastic would go in the GyreStore. If you had a bunch muck it would go in MireStore.
cellularmitosis 8y ago
I think its worth adding some additional phonetic context around this remark (I made a similar remark and my coworkers thought I was making a racist joke). The reason native Japanese speakers struggle with "R" and "L" sounds is because they just have one phoneme to work with, which sounds (to a native English speaker) like a combination of "R", "L", and "D". If you aren't exposed to phonemes at a young age, it is difficult to expand your set later in life. An analogous difficulty might exist for English speakers if a Chinese company came up with two product names which used the exact same sequence of syllables, but had "tonal" differences in pronunciation.

borplk 8y ago

Spent a ton of time and still decided to stick to names that differ by a single "r vs l" letter. Wow. Don't mean to be rude but go for a walk outside and speak to 3 people outside the bubble.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dymk 8y ago
You don't see the irony in that statement, as you toss in your low-effort criticism just to stoke the HN feeding frenzy?
- borplk 8y ago
  > low-effort criticism It's a clear blunt suggestion to get out of their bubble. No one outside Google would hear that explanation and say "Yeah totally makes sense one of them is an enterprise file share and the other a document database service focused on mobile and web, crystal clear and very little confusion.". What more do you want out of my comment for it to not be low effort? Write a 3 page essay about it carefully making a case based on peer reviewed scientific evidence?
  - dymk 8y ago
    You misunderstand, the comment provided no value at all; it’s not that I wanted peer review studies.
stingraycharles 8y ago
To be fair, I think “Filestore” in itself is a pretty descriptive name, and the real problem is the name “Firestore”. I can imagine the internal discussion when a bit like that as well, and here we have the result.
deesix 8y ago
Disclosure: I work on GCP Thanks for the feedback. We spoke to number of existing GCP customers for feedback, but it's fair to say we can always talk to more non-customers.

oavdeev 8y ago

I mean.. I get it, there isn't a lot to work with, it is a thing that _stores files_ after all, and it most closely resembles a normal filesystem. But it does make GCP's storage product naming even more confusing overall (after "Cloud Storage" vs "Cloud Datastore" mentioned above).

niftich 8y ago

Update the chooser flowchart [1] when it's out of beta or when appropriate. This page also has brief descriptions and comparison tables. [1] https://cloud.google.com/storage-options/ https://cloud.google.com/storage-options/

iagovar 8y ago

I'm non native English speaker and I didn't notice the difference. Please, use useful names that do tell what is it about.

foobiekr 8y ago

What was so special about the name that it was even worth the debate? Why not avoid the problem?

IanCal 8y ago

I mean all of the following in the best possible way: Perhaps also worth looking at the screenshot in the blogpost. You have in there: --- Datastore Storage Filestore --- So, datastore is not storage, nor is filestore. What is it storage storing if not data or files? Why are files not data? I have no idea what should go where. > We know folks need to create, read and write large files with low latency. We also know that film studios and production shops are always looking to render movies and create CGI images faster and more efficiently. So alongside our LA region launch, So I couldn't create, read or write before without low latency? I thought this was already a feature of your other products > we’re pleased to enable these creative projects by bringing file storage capabilities to GCP for the first time with Cloud Filestore. For the first time? I couldn't store files before? I'm not trying to be an arse, but I really don't get from this what the key difference is from everything else you offer.

derefr 8y ago
> What is it storage storing if not data or files? Objects. Cloud Storage is the S3 competitor. > Why are files not data? “Data” as in rows in a database. Like Dynamo. Everything on a computer is data. The thing you’ve got to understand is that the terms we use, “objects”, “files”, “data” — these don’t refer to types of data, but rather to access paradigms for data. The semantics of their storage, indexing, mutability, etc. An object is a blob of data named by a key, that you can retrieve entirely, or overwrite entirely, and where usually you automatically get a version history of old versions that have been overwritten that you can retrieve, with a cutoff for automatic GC. “Data” is a structured tuple that a database knows how to index into, and sort by the columns of. You insert rows, update columns of rows by a key, or delete rows by a key. “Files” are seekable streams where you can index anywhere into a file by position and then read(2) or write(2) data at that position, and where other clients can see those updates as soon as you sync(2), without needing to close(2) the file first. All could be used to implement the other (S3 is implemented in terms of Dynamo rows holding chunks of object data, for example.) But each access semantics has use-cases for which it is an impedance match or mismatch.
- IanCal 8y ago

jedberg 8y ago

Please make sure you read this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17402427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17402427 It explains why this is linguistically bad. Basically, a billion people on this planet don't distinguish between the l and r sounds, so for 1/6 of the planet, these names are identical.

Gigablah 8y ago
Native Chinese speaker here. That post is comically wrong. For one thing, you don't pronounce either "file" or "fire" like "filer" or "firer" -- isn't English amazing ;) -- so there's no L/R sound in the first place for us to supposedly confuse.

mandeepj 8y ago

> I can say we spent a ton of time debating this but we felt that the fact one is an enterprise file share and the other a document database service focused on mobile and web would mean very little conflict for customers. How about naming one as Cloud FileStore and other as Cloud DbStore?

kuwze 8y ago

Maybe you could give them pokemon/ikea-like nicknames? Stupid idea, but it might really help people searching for stuff.

bigtones 8y ago

Oh oh, it's already causing a lot of confusion. Just check the 70+ comments in this thread alone hating on the naming and professing their confusion and it's been out less than 12 hours... and that is from a self selecting very tech savvy audience. I think you've got a problem.