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"Sudden change of policy by Google, which is directed specifically at startups (as smaller web sites should largely remain below even the new lower thresholds),
by ericd 8y ago
"Sudden change of policy by Google, which is directed specifically at startups (as smaller web sites should largely remain below even the new lower thresholds), is surely an unpleasant surprise for us and does not create much trust in Google as a vendor. In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick. For example we would be wary on taking free Google Analytics for granted."
I think this is one of the most important points in the article - the way they handle these pricing changes destroys trust in Google's other business offerings. How can people use Google products and services as a core piece of their infrastructure when they're willing to bump their prices >10x with only a few months of notice? That could literally be a business-ending event, depending on how core that service is to the business.
In the case of maps, there weren't many great alternatives for a long time, due to Google sucking all the oxygen/profit potential out of the field with their excellent free offerings. Fortunately, their last (sudden) price bump seems to have allowed the creation of some good alternatives.
- wwweston 8y agoWhile I've experienced the frustration of having a formerly free service develop paid tiers (and policies that put me in those tiers), of all the changes a software service can make, this is the one that frustrates me the least, or at any rate less than: * shutting down the service entirely because the user base never grew into customers who actually valued the service * changing your terms of service to forbid an activity that was previously allowed, because someone discovered a use that messed up the price points and the service owners would rather forbid that than offer a reasonable price point allowing it * moving to opaquely metered service potentially with apparently arbitrary levels of financial exposure to the client A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service. When it comes to Google, I'm more worried that they might just arbitrarily mothball something on a management roadmap whim.
- draw_down 8y agoJacking up the price so far that it becomes prohibitive to actually use, on short notice, isn't much different from shutting it down, is it? In both cases you suddenly can't use the service anymore.
- tobltobs 8y agoThought the same, there are not many use cases which will be still profitable after this price increase.
- ajross 8y agoCounterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized mapping product for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable. I mean, there's a real cry-me-a-river aspect here. No one has a Google-granted fundamental right to mapping. It's a free product Google released to drive traffic to their own offerings, and which they happen to make available for free for a lot of purposes. As it turns out, yeah, there's a lot of value we as a society can derive from low cost pervasive mapping. So let's find a way to share the cost and not just whine about Google, no?
- draw_down 8y agoWho is talking about startups, though?
- cannonedhamster 8y agoThe article said nothing about making it free, it said that the costs, which were previously in line with competitors, increased by very, very large amounts without any perceived increase in value. Then they looked at options which were commercial offerings which cost dramatically less. They are paying for the service, it's not subsidized or free. It's like you didn't read any of the article.
- alextheparrot 8y ago
- zackmorris 8y agoIs there something like Amazon or Google shopping with a list of prices for all products through time? Kind of like the Wayback Machine (archive.org) but for products. Maybe having a searchable historical database of everything imaginable and their prices would keep companies honest and prevent price gouging.
- ryneandal 8y agoSomething like a PaaS Price zombie https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11360262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11360262?
- dchuk 8y agoThat's a really neat idea! Maybe include alerting and the ability to "follow" services you use to monitor their prices?
- rmorey 8y agoThis exists for Amazon products: camelcamelcamel.com
- jiveturkey 8y agocamelcamelcamel (.com)
- Danieru 8y agoIn Japan there is a site called kakaku.com which maintains graphs for historical prices. We used it to great effect when buying a combo washer and dryer.
- lloydde 8y agoI find a good site like every few years, but they always disappear. My guess is there is more (some) money in B2B.
- matte_black 8y agoOn the other hand, if you are a business making real money, these price changes are no big deal. This happens all the time. Where some people see a sob story, I see a competitor getting stamped out.
- 6cd6beb 8y ago>In the case of maps, there weren't many great alternatives for a long time, due to Google sucking all the oxygen/profit potential out of the field with their excellent free offerings. ianal and all that, but isn't somewhere antitrust- or monopoly- adjacent? I know if walmart moved into a new city and started giving away hardware for free, then waited until all the local hardware stores had been shut down for 10 months, and then jacked up their prices to 100 times what they used to be before going free, that'd be pretty illegal.
- asadlionpk 8y agoDon't Uber and Amazon do that already?
- neospice 8y agoAnd WalMart.
- rickycook 8y agoi think uber at least (not that i want to defend anything they do) is different, because they don’t have low rates to smother their competition; they have low introductory rates to attract riders and drivers to the service unsure if that’s also predatory pricing? seems different to me
- smileysteve 8y ago> they don’t have low rates to smother their competition Whether their competition is Lyft, Taxis, or public transportation, their subsidized pricing is a big factor to their customers.
- richardhod 8y agoJust because they have a nice PR-friendly story to tell doesn't make the pricing any less predatory. The point of predatory pricing is to attract people to the service, to shut down competition.
- everybodyknows 8y ago
- C7H8N4O2 8y ago> In the case of maps, there weren't many great alternatives for a long time, due to Google sucking all the oxygen/profit potential out of the field with their excellent free offerings. There was a related discussion[0] on HN a few weeks ago that I found enlightening. Commentator ucaetano's phrasing of the strategy was "create a desert of profitability around you". The discussion of moats vs deserts found here [1] is also useful. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17047348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17047348 "Laws of Tech Economics: Commoditize Your Complement" [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17048492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17048492
- ucaetano 8y agoHa, that was me! Thanks for the bump!
- komali2 8y agoAlmost every conversation I've had with someone working at a startup in this city inevitably turns to the "so, are you worried Google will simply start offering your service for free?" I remember like 3 or 4 years ago having this conversation at a hackathon with a bunch of "Machine Learning" / "Sentiment Analysis" APIs present... right as google started offering both for free on their cloud platform.
- ucaetano 8y agoWhich most likely meant the startup was a feature or a product, not a company with a viable business model.
- bassman9000 8y agoIn the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick. Ah, the classic Oracle trick. Good to see the tradition is alive.
- foobarbazetc 8y agoGoogle did something similar with Stackdriver logging, where they went from a generous free tier to an insanely expensive $.50/Gb in roughly 2-3 months. Very annoying. Especially because by default every GCP service logs a bunch of crap to Stackdriver. Our log cost was going to be as high as our compute cost.
- Vendan 8y agoThey've got easy to use exclusions that eliminate the cost if you don't want the logs (and can be pretty picky about what to exclude, even to the point of doing percentage exclusions) and they announced it in advance and pushed the date back a few times. My issue is with devs that write software that spits out a couple of gigs an hour and refuse to trim it down or exclude things.
- twistedpair 8y agoDiane Greene must be trying to build a profitable operation.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- flukus 8y ago> In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick It seems like they haven't learned anything at all. Sure it was google that shafted them in this case, but the problem isn't google, it's that their business is entirely dependent on a third party who has the power to do this. They rejected the option that would have prevented this from happening in the future with another company. Oracle probably has a sales team on the way to their offices now.
- apatters 8y agoThe pricing change is understandably very frustrating for users of Google Maps who are affected, but it seems like a big win to me for everyone in the mapping market. Google is trading away a monopoly position (and related regulatory risk) in exchange for increased revenue so it's a win for them. It's a win for other mappers because now they can compete on price. It's a win for users because they are getting more choice.
- rurban 8y agoBut the other mapping services will very soon adjust their prices also. It makes no sense to be 10x cheaper than Google when 2x cheaper does the same. I still have to understand openstreetmap mapping solutions. It's named open, not free, so I guess providing your own server with osm data would work. Only with FreeStreetMap the data would be infected also.
- jhall1468 8y ago> But the other mapping services will very soon adjust their prices also. It makes no sense to be 10x cheaper than Google when 2x cheaper does the same. There's a great deal of competition and that generally results in a race to the bottom. The market leader just removed themselves from the market and the best way to capitalize is stay low and build your userbase. We won't see price changes by any of these companies. They all want to be #1.
- jehlakj 8y agoWhen you have a service that’s ten times cheaper than the best service, people start to raise eyebrows. They perceive it to be much worse. It isn’t always true, but it’s not uncommon either. I doubt companies are going to race to the bottom.
- Xixi 8y agoIn the context of a business building a service around it, a mapping service is not a consumer product. Superficial perception only go so far until it is debunked by careful scrutiny. I would certainly hope that a startup deciding to build a service relying on a map provider would test, and measure quantitatively how good the service is before choosing to build their business on top of it...
- stevefan1999 8y agoRemember when Google once said “Don’t be evil” as their motto? Well what Google did at this instance and on nowadays is evil. But on the other hand, I think it is necessary, because at the end of the day Google is still a company that needs to make money and most importantly compete with each other, I’m really disappointed at Google to abuse their trust to hurt others.
- cbolton 8y agoWell what Google did at this instance and on nowadays is evil What do you mean it's evil? People call Google evil for so many things that are hardly evil at all, that the word has lost its meaning in the context of Google. For example I honestly cannot tell if you're calling them evil for increasing Maps pricing (thereby hurting maps-consuming startups) or for previously asking a low price (thereby hurting startups that offer maps).
- fdsak 8y agoProbably for not showing consistency :)
- Zooper 8y agoThat motto was removed some years ago: people using to too much to call them out.
- hoffs 8y agoIf you are relying on other services that heavily, it sounds like you didn't have such a great business to start with
- PDoyle 8y agoEver worked at a startup?
- Dannymetconan 8y agoThe only alternative would be to develop everything in house and to purchase and run your own servers.
- unreal37 8y agoGoogle was subsidizing their startup. Makes sense that they have to pay at least something.
- chiefalchemist 8y agoRe: "...is surely an unpleasant surprise for us and does not create much trust in Google as a vendor..." I was under the impression the trust for Google evaporated a long time ago. Sure, alternatives can be few at times. But anyone committed to and in bed with Google has to be sleeping with one eye open.
- mnutt 8y agoHaving interacted with the Google Maps sales team, I would imagine these posts are a result of these companies hopping on a sales call expecting something ‘google’-like and are surprised that the Oracle sales team is on the call. The value extraction mentality was a bit surprising compared to the image the rest of google presents.
- amorousf00p 8y agoWhy you cannot trust this model 101: because it's practitioners understand the value of the labor/product, capitalize on the OSS ideal and then push it to the unsuspecting. I don't know how many bait and switch episodes from google I need to see but by 2008 I was done with them -- for the first time. Ad-nauseam. If you boycotted and didn't use Google they would wither and die and stop being something to worry about: for immediate google specific free offerings that are sucker bait. Also for self aggrandizing standards/inclusions and buying the overt talent. But whatever. The HN community is full of dupes and buy ins, culture whores and fifth columnists. True belief in OSS died when everyone else took it and got rich.