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Google Cloud provides more than just VMs and Containers. It has a bunch of services backed in, from a variety of databases such as Firebase (that have powerful

Google Cloud provides more than just VMs and Containers. It has a bunch of services backed in, from a variety of databases such as Firebase (that have powerful built in subscription and eventing systems) to fully baked in Auth, (Google will even handle doing two factor for you!) to assisting with certain types of machine learning. Vultr looks like they provide more traditional services with a few extra niceties on top. Within Google's infrastructure, I can deploy a new HTTPS REST endpoint with a .js file and 1 console command. Could I set up an ecosystem on a Vultr VM to do the same? Sure, it isn't magic. But GCP's entire value prop is that they've already done a lot of that work for you, and as someone running a startup, I was able to go from "I have this idea" to "I have this REST endpoint" in couple of days, without worrying about managing infrastructure. That said, articles like this always worry me. I've never seen an article that says "Wow Google's support team really helped out!"

jazoom 8y ago
I do use AWS, and have tried out GCP before. Just because I use Vultr doesn't mean I can't also use others.
- com2kid 8y ago
  I should have quoted more. :) I was indicating why you might have gotten some early down votes, your comparison wasn't like to like.
  - jazoom 8y ago
    Thanks for the info. You may be right about the downvote reason (though it's a pretty ridiculous reason), but I don't think that matters since they are in the same industry providing a similar service and there's no reason why GCP can't provide the same service as Vultr, especially since they charge a lot more for their instances than Vultr does.
    - jlgaddis 8y ago
      Downvotes here on HN often don't make sense. You can be exactly 100% correct about something and still get downvoted to hell. The best thing to do is to simply ignore them as asking about downvotes just invites more of them.
      - jazoom 8y ago
        Well, I don't really care about the precious internet points disappearing. I'd much rather hear from someone what their reasoning is since I might actually learn something. But it is telling that there have been at least 5 downvotes but no one is willing to comment as to why. Edit: since I see you have a downvote (surprise, surprise) I'll clarify that it wasn't me.
        smt88 8y ago
        Your new downvotes may be because HN guidelines say not to ask about or discuss downvotes.
        thecrazyone 8y ago
        What is this? Fightclub? "Rule #1 of fightclub: You never talk about fight club" :D Seems like a recipe for breeding unfairness. "Don't talk about the system", :sigh:
        path411 8y ago
        It just generates a bunch of unnecessary comments in a thread. There's already like 8 in this chain for example.
sorenjan 8y ago
Using such proprietary features sounds like a great way to subject yourself to vendor lock in and leave you vulnerable to your cloud provider's every whim. I understand that using ready made features is alluring, but at what point are you too dependent on somebody else? All these cloud services reminds me a bit of left-pad, how many external dependencies can you afford? Maybe I'm too suspicious and cynical, but then I read articles like these from time to time...
- sinni800 8y ago
  You're not alone. I worry the same about many things, but everyone just thinks I'm a negative nancy for discounting THIS AWESOME SERVICE with these awesome, 100% non evil people behind it!
- bonesss 8y ago
  The difference, IMO, is that you're generally leveraging the cloud providers platform in addition to using their hosting. There are ways to make the hosting relatively agnostic, but choosing a pub/sub solution (for example), that operates at 'web scale' will have a distinct impact on your solutions and force you into their ecosystem to maximize value. Why bother with BigCorps UltraResistant services if you're only going to use some small percentage of the capabilities? I've made systems that abstract away the difference entirely, but I think the 'goldilocks zone' is abstracted core domain logic that will run on anything, and then going whole-hog on each individual environment. Accept that "cloud" is vendor lockin, and mitigate that threat at the level of deployment (multi-cloud, multi-stack), rather than just the application.

jazoom 8y ago

I do use AWS, and have tried out GCP before. Just because I use Vultr doesn't mean I can't also use others.

com2kid 8y ago
I should have quoted more. :) I was indicating why you might have gotten some early down votes, your comparison wasn't like to like.
- jazoom 8y ago
  Thanks for the info. You may be right about the downvote reason (though it's a pretty ridiculous reason), but I don't think that matters since they are in the same industry providing a similar service and there's no reason why GCP can't provide the same service as Vultr, especially since they charge a lot more for their instances than Vultr does.
  - jlgaddis 8y ago
    Downvotes here on HN often don't make sense. You can be exactly 100% correct about something and still get downvoted to hell. The best thing to do is to simply ignore them as asking about downvotes just invites more of them.
    - jazoom 8y ago
      Well, I don't really care about the precious internet points disappearing. I'd much rather hear from someone what their reasoning is since I might actually learn something. But it is telling that there have been at least 5 downvotes but no one is willing to comment as to why. Edit: since I see you have a downvote (surprise, surprise) I'll clarify that it wasn't me.
      - smt88 8y ago
        Your new downvotes may be because HN guidelines say not to ask about or discuss downvotes.
        thecrazyone 8y ago
        What is this? Fightclub? "Rule #1 of fightclub: You never talk about fight club" :D Seems like a recipe for breeding unfairness. "Don't talk about the system", :sigh:
        path411 8y ago
        It just generates a bunch of unnecessary comments in a thread. There's already like 8 in this chain for example.

sorenjan 8y ago

Using such proprietary features sounds like a great way to subject yourself to vendor lock in and leave you vulnerable to your cloud provider's every whim. I understand that using ready made features is alluring, but at what point are you too dependent on somebody else? All these cloud services reminds me a bit of left-pad, how many external dependencies can you afford? Maybe I'm too suspicious and cynical, but then I read articles like these from time to time...

sinni800 8y ago
You're not alone. I worry the same about many things, but everyone just thinks I'm a negative nancy for discounting THIS AWESOME SERVICE with these awesome, 100% non evil people behind it!
bonesss 8y ago
The difference, IMO, is that you're generally leveraging the cloud providers platform in addition to using their hosting. There are ways to make the hosting relatively agnostic, but choosing a pub/sub solution (for example), that operates at 'web scale' will have a distinct impact on your solutions and force you into their ecosystem to maximize value. Why bother with BigCorps UltraResistant services if you're only going to use some small percentage of the capabilities? I've made systems that abstract away the difference entirely, but I think the 'goldilocks zone' is abstracted core domain logic that will run on anything, and then going whole-hog on each individual environment. Accept that "cloud" is vendor lockin, and mitigate that threat at the level of deployment (multi-cloud, multi-stack), rather than just the application.