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Can anyone help me think this through: it seems Google/Alphabet shouldn't just be #3 cloud provider, but the cloud itself. It should have been difficult for con

Can anyone help me think this through: it seems Google/Alphabet shouldn't just be #3 cloud provider, but the cloud itself. It should have been difficult for consumers to separate the concepts of cloud/Alphabet, as cloud is so integral to the Alphabet business. Instead the gold podium is occupied by a book re-seller. But the entire Alphabet product line, from the amazing distributed Big Tables to the stitching of 3rd party satellite polygons, is just a front-end cloud use case. So why didn't it happen? Departing CEO Greene writes in the OP link that she was only supposed to be running GCP for 2 years. Why on earth was an interim CEO there in the first place

mehrdada 8y ago
Google acquired her company without any real product for $380MM. She cashed out, now she is gone. Simple as that. It's going to be harsh ride from here with no upside.
- rrdharan 8y ago
  Diane was already a billionaire prior to the acquisition. She also donated all of the Bebop money to charity anyway[1]. And she’s retaining her Google board seat. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/diane-green-donates-150m-to-charity-2016-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/diane-green-donates-150m-to-...
vl 8y ago
Google missed cloud in the same way Microsoft missed internet. Google entire product strategy is defense of Ads/Search revenues and napalming any emerging threats. Through this perspective when cloud technologies started to emerge, they didn't seem important. Then it became clear that cloud providers grow and consolidate so fast, that Google is not going to be hardware buyer #1 anymore and will lose access to best hardware discounts, threatening profitability of Ads/Search itself! This was pivotal moment: backwards Cloud PA nobody cared about (fun story: Cloud PA was once forgotten at company-wide key result meeting, it was fun to see how couple hundreds of people watching video-cast in the auditorium looked at each other and like "meeting is over, they didn't mention or PA once, what is going on!") suddenly became the priority, was merged with TI (Tech Infrastructure) and everything became "Cloud! Cloud! Cloud!".
- arebop 8y ago
  Google's search foundations were built on a private cloud, in contrast to the prevailing architecture of that time. Google never denied the utility of building abstractions over commoditized machines the way Microsoft denied the heterogeneity and decentralized aspects of the Internet. IMO, Google was just too focused on solving problems for human beings vs. outside institutions; that's why they neglected to invest in making Borg into a public platform.
  - romed 8y ago
    Borg can’t be a public product. Look at the way people complain how hard it is to use EC2 then multiply by a large factor. No isolation, sudden death, zero local I/O resources. It’s technically marvelous and dirt cheap but the masses aren’t ready for it.
    - jpatokal 8y ago
      Which is why Kubernetes/GKE is the public version of Borg.
- bogomipz 8y ago
  Could you say what is "Cloud PA" here? I'm not familiar with this term.
  - vl 8y ago
    Product Area, it’s like division under Vice President or Senior Vice President.
s17n 8y ago
Two reasons: 1. Google saw their infrastructure as being a key competitive advantage, not something to be commoditized. 2. More importantly: Google's core business has ridiculously high profit margins, which made them institutionally incapable of seriously pursuing low-margin business opportunities.
briffle 8y ago
If google starts "dogfooding" and moves all of their compute/storage, etc to being purchased from their cloud division, then they would be the worlds largest cloud vendor the next quarter.. That would be pretty interesting to see..
mirceal 8y ago
Book re-seller. Hahaha. May have been true at some point but right now it’s THE CLOUD PROVIDER. The only other player in the cloud is Azure. Everyone else is struggling to stay relevant.
- halbritt 8y ago
  Microsoft needed something to do with all the infrastructure they built waiting for bing to take off.
  - mirceal 8y ago
    Ha. Even if it’s true (don’t know if it is) it’s impressive to see M$ come back from the dead.
    - halbritt 8y ago
      Not, exactly. I did interview with Microsoft Global Network Services several years ago (before Satya Nadella) and got a sense on the infrastructure and money they were pumping into Bing. They were replicating the style of data center deployments that Google was known for in terms of scale and efficiency. I wasn't really privy to any specific details beyond the Clos architecture they'd adopted for their underlay and the fact that they rolled their own switches and SDN. I don't recall specifically when this was, but I do recall being impressed that they had something deployed and working. The only folks anyone were certain had done this at the time was Google. Facebook would later announce something similar with their Wedge switch and now there's a fully baked OCP standard. They point of all this I suppose is that they were heavily investing in scale for Bing and Office 365. I suspect the product of all that work is what became Azure.
navinsylvester 8y ago
You seem to base #3 on false numbers. AWS is the first huge player and they have a huge advantage due to it. Companies like Microsoft/Oracle/IBM have huge enterprise presence so it does skew numbers on the cloud. Competency should be measured on fine grain. As a GCP customer for 2 years and having evaluated all major providers i can say this without doubt that #3 is not the real standing by no measure.
sytelus 8y ago
This is my guess: Doing enterprise requires significant amount of 1:1 contact. You need thousands of people dedicated to each of the 50,000 or so top accounts. These folks do site visits, gather info on legacy stuff, try to figure out your requirements, connect to dev/PMs from core team, help you do sizing, convenience CTO et al about benefits, take your phone call at 2AM so on and on. Doing enterprise is mainly about creating, training and managing vast sales force in financially efficient way. I suspect GCP hasn't focused on this part much. It's very capital intensive operation and if not done right it can drain your balance sheet very quickly. For enterprise related businesses this is about the singular skill for an organisation that matters.

mehrdada 8y ago

Google acquired her company without any real product for $380MM. She cashed out, now she is gone. Simple as that. It's going to be harsh ride from here with no upside.

rrdharan 8y ago
Diane was already a billionaire prior to the acquisition. She also donated all of the Bebop money to charity anyway[1]. And she’s retaining her Google board seat. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/diane-green-donates-150m-to-charity-2016-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/diane-green-donates-150m-to-...

vl 8y ago

Google missed cloud in the same way Microsoft missed internet. Google entire product strategy is defense of Ads/Search revenues and napalming any emerging threats. Through this perspective when cloud technologies started to emerge, they didn't seem important. Then it became clear that cloud providers grow and consolidate so fast, that Google is not going to be hardware buyer #1 anymore and will lose access to best hardware discounts, threatening profitability of Ads/Search itself! This was pivotal moment: backwards Cloud PA nobody cared about (fun story: Cloud PA was once forgotten at company-wide key result meeting, it was fun to see how couple hundreds of people watching video-cast in the auditorium looked at each other and like "meeting is over, they didn't mention or PA once, what is going on!") suddenly became the priority, was merged with TI (Tech Infrastructure) and everything became "Cloud! Cloud! Cloud!".

arebop 8y ago
Google's search foundations were built on a private cloud, in contrast to the prevailing architecture of that time. Google never denied the utility of building abstractions over commoditized machines the way Microsoft denied the heterogeneity and decentralized aspects of the Internet. IMO, Google was just too focused on solving problems for human beings vs. outside institutions; that's why they neglected to invest in making Borg into a public platform.
- romed 8y ago
  Borg can’t be a public product. Look at the way people complain how hard it is to use EC2 then multiply by a large factor. No isolation, sudden death, zero local I/O resources. It’s technically marvelous and dirt cheap but the masses aren’t ready for it.
  - jpatokal 8y ago
    Which is why Kubernetes/GKE is the public version of Borg.
bogomipz 8y ago
Could you say what is "Cloud PA" here? I'm not familiar with this term.
- vl 8y ago
  Product Area, it’s like division under Vice President or Senior Vice President.

s17n 8y ago

Two reasons: 1. Google saw their infrastructure as being a key competitive advantage, not something to be commoditized. 2. More importantly: Google's core business has ridiculously high profit margins, which made them institutionally incapable of seriously pursuing low-margin business opportunities.

briffle 8y ago

If google starts "dogfooding" and moves all of their compute/storage, etc to being purchased from their cloud division, then they would be the worlds largest cloud vendor the next quarter.. That would be pretty interesting to see..

mirceal 8y ago

Book re-seller. Hahaha. May have been true at some point but right now it’s THE CLOUD PROVIDER. The only other player in the cloud is Azure. Everyone else is struggling to stay relevant.

halbritt 8y ago
Microsoft needed something to do with all the infrastructure they built waiting for bing to take off.
- mirceal 8y ago
  Ha. Even if it’s true (don’t know if it is) it’s impressive to see M$ come back from the dead.
  - halbritt 8y ago
    Not, exactly. I did interview with Microsoft Global Network Services several years ago (before Satya Nadella) and got a sense on the infrastructure and money they were pumping into Bing. They were replicating the style of data center deployments that Google was known for in terms of scale and efficiency. I wasn't really privy to any specific details beyond the Clos architecture they'd adopted for their underlay and the fact that they rolled their own switches and SDN. I don't recall specifically when this was, but I do recall being impressed that they had something deployed and working. The only folks anyone were certain had done this at the time was Google. Facebook would later announce something similar with their Wedge switch and now there's a fully baked OCP standard. They point of all this I suppose is that they were heavily investing in scale for Bing and Office 365. I suspect the product of all that work is what became Azure.

navinsylvester 8y ago

You seem to base #3 on false numbers. AWS is the first huge player and they have a huge advantage due to it. Companies like Microsoft/Oracle/IBM have huge enterprise presence so it does skew numbers on the cloud. Competency should be measured on fine grain. As a GCP customer for 2 years and having evaluated all major providers i can say this without doubt that #3 is not the real standing by no measure.

sytelus 8y ago

This is my guess: Doing enterprise requires significant amount of 1:1 contact. You need thousands of people dedicated to each of the 50,000 or so top accounts. These folks do site visits, gather info on legacy stuff, try to figure out your requirements, connect to dev/PMs from core team, help you do sizing, convenience CTO et al about benefits, take your phone call at 2AM so on and on. Doing enterprise is mainly about creating, training and managing vast sales force in financially efficient way. I suspect GCP hasn't focused on this part much. It's very capital intensive operation and if not done right it can drain your balance sheet very quickly. For enterprise related businesses this is about the singular skill for an organisation that matters.