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> Considering how late Google got into the cloud game, it seems to be doing respectably well, given all of the catch-up it's needed to do first. Google is stil

> Considering how late Google got into the cloud game, it seems to be doing respectably well, given all of the catch-up it's needed to do first. Google is still at 3% market share which puts it at the same level as IBM Soft Layer and Rackspace. [0] Given the technologies Google has developed for cloud-native/cloud-scale computing (Kubernetes, MapReduce, TensorFlow, etc.) not to mention outstanding apps like Gmail, this result has to be a disappointment to their investors. [0] https://www.skyhighnetworks.com/cloud-security-blog/microsoft-azure-closes-iaas-adoption-gap-with-amazon-aws/ https://www.skyhighnetworks.com/cloud-security-blog/microsof...

crazygringo 8y ago
I'd argue it's still way too early to call it a disappointment, and that we'll only know 5-10 years from now. Google had to invest massively to catch up to AWS purely technically, and it's only now that people are starting to consider it to be close. Then consider that companies will tend to pick a cloud provider and not revisit that decision for 5 or 10 years. This has to be a very long-term play where the results won't show up for many, many years. Greene's tenure should be judged in terms of market perception (e.g. if we were making the decision now instead of 10 years ago, would Google be viable?) as opposed to a large absolute increase in market share (so check back 10 years from now).
- chibg10 8y ago
  The margins may well have shrunk significantly by the time the "long-term" materializes though. Cloud computing seems to me like an industry at high-risk of being commotitized after the initial gold rush -- similar to smartphones. If that's the case, I'm not sure it makes sense to prioritize the future over today.
  - MediumD 8y ago
    Are smartphones really a commodity, when people spend hundreds of dollars more on the iPhone vs. Android competitors? With any platform certain aspects will become commotitized, but when you have to choose between building on one ecosystem or another, there will always be room for differentiation.
  - em500 8y ago
    "Commotitized" is not synonymous with low profit. There are at least a half dozen oil companies doing a few billion/qrt in profit.
- halbritt 8y ago
  I tend to agree. I've been a GCP customer for ~18 months and as recent as a year ago it still felt like very early days for sales and support. Well, actually it still feels like early days for support. The products, however, have been surprisingly good for the most part and seem more mature and well-engineered than their market share would suggest, especially in comparison to Azure. So, I'm of the opinion that if they can figure out how to sell, they'll do quite well.
  - pishpash 8y ago
    They need to figure out how to be code complete and ship it, not yap about vaporware that AWS has had for years.
    - halbritt 8y ago
      Such as?
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  While this is just my personal opinion, I view AWS, Azure and GCP as follows: 1. AWS is the clear market leader, tons of services, good support options, but you'll need pretty expert-level ops people to make sure everything is working together securely. You may have to build more plumbing than you think. 2. Azure is great for companies that are already MS shops and it makes lots of MS tech (.Net, SQL Server) super easy to use in the cloud. 3. If I were starting a startup, I would go with GCP. IMO their services are easier to use with a smaller ops team, and they have lots of services that scale more easily as you grow (e.g. Cloud Spanner). But not as good enterprise-level support. I see lots of excitement for GCP in the startup scene, and as these startups become more mature I think the "enterprise-level"-ness of GCP will improve.
  - aviv 8y ago
    The complexity of AWS is exactly why it is so successful. It is being pushed by both outside consultants and employees who become the experts within the enterprise. GCP's ease of use is a disadvantage in the big picture.
    - marktangotango 8y ago
      This is a pragmatic and astute observation. This scenario has played out several times in the past.
      - archgoon 8y ago
        > This scenario has played out several times in the past. What examples come to mind?
        sz4kerto 8y ago
        Oracle.
        gaius 8y ago
        That is what makes Oracles cloud play such a mystery. They had a huge asset in a loyal corps of Oracle DBAs embedded in every large organisation on the planet. Now they are saying “fire those guys and we’ll host your databases”. But maybe those guys will say “nah, Postgres is actually all we need, see ya”.
- hodgesrm 8y ago
  Assuming you are correct and Google invested heavily that seems to rule out strong profits from GCS at this time. So what exactly is it that Google is doing now that will lead to long-term profitability in a business where revenue is closely tied to scale? Can Google really prevail over Amazon (first mover) and MS Azure (great enterprise chops + Office) based on capital investment alone? Amazon and Azure are not standing still. Both also have an order of magnitude advantage in market share. Finally GCS is not strong in the big growth markets in Asia. For my money Google's best bet is to stay in the game and hope something alters the market in a way that weakens their competitors. That assumes they can double down on the investment to remain viable and recognize the opportunity before others do.
  - crazygringo 8y ago
    First, Google doesn't need to prevail, it just needs to get a sizeable enough chunk of the market to make a profit. E.g. even if it's an eternal long-term 33% to AWS, Azure and GCP, it's a rational investment for Google. The market's big enough. Second, Google is clearly betting that its scale will indeed give it a benefit -- the scale of its data centers which include all of Search and everything else (e.g. raw costs for computing and storage being cheaper than competitors), the scale of its investments in machine learning which it makes available on GCP, the scale of its investments in private networking and security, etc. Part of Google's pitch is that it's providing Google-class security and networking which AWS and Azure simply can't match.
    - gaius 8y ago
      even if it's an eternal long-term 33% to AWS, Azure and GCP, it's a rational investment for Google They would need to grow their marketshare ten-fold to be in that position, and they would need to defeat Alibaba on its home turf. It’s not going to happen. GCP could possibly drive IBM and Oracle out of the cloud market, but even that’s unlikely.
- pishpash 8y ago
  No, five years ago, it would have been too early to call it a disappointment. Now, it is a disappointment, and there will not be 5-10 years for this to course correct, probably only 1-2 years -- if they play the Kubernetes card perfectly. There is an extra dose of disappointment because on technical merits, GCP's basic VM substrate -- Compute Engine and Cloud Storage -- is far superior to AWS even five years ago, but AWS kept their ear to the street, anticipated every managed service and ancillary feature that their customers could have wanted, and executed relentlessly. Google has not mounted even half as vigorous and urgent a response as needed under the circumstances. There is nothing at the outset that would prevent someone from choosing GCP, many might even be predisposed given the reputation of Google's own infrastructure, but when more and more of the tasks that you might want to offload to cloud are still not available or not reliably working on GCP, and you're stuck with operating VM's, you might seriously consider the competitor, and once that decision is made, you are not coming back. It's an execution, and perhaps cultural, problem with Google, not one of technology or market.
shrumm 8y ago
My take on GCP is that they have focus areas like Kubernetes, Spanner, Firebase that they do very well on, but for more generic offerings not so much. For instance, our app uses Postgres 10's native partitioning features, it's REALLY strange to me that Cloud SQL is still on PG 9.6. They also don't communicate effectively on when / if they'll add it which makes planning difficult. AWS on the other hand is already testing PG 11 and has an open schedule in place to their customers can plan ahead.

crazygringo 8y ago

I'd argue it's still way too early to call it a disappointment, and that we'll only know 5-10 years from now. Google had to invest massively to catch up to AWS purely technically, and it's only now that people are starting to consider it to be close. Then consider that companies will tend to pick a cloud provider and not revisit that decision for 5 or 10 years. This has to be a very long-term play where the results won't show up for many, many years. Greene's tenure should be judged in terms of market perception (e.g. if we were making the decision now instead of 10 years ago, would Google be viable?) as opposed to a large absolute increase in market share (so check back 10 years from now).

chibg10 8y ago
The margins may well have shrunk significantly by the time the "long-term" materializes though. Cloud computing seems to me like an industry at high-risk of being commotitized after the initial gold rush -- similar to smartphones. If that's the case, I'm not sure it makes sense to prioritize the future over today.
- MediumD 8y ago
  Are smartphones really a commodity, when people spend hundreds of dollars more on the iPhone vs. Android competitors? With any platform certain aspects will become commotitized, but when you have to choose between building on one ecosystem or another, there will always be room for differentiation.
- em500 8y ago
  "Commotitized" is not synonymous with low profit. There are at least a half dozen oil companies doing a few billion/qrt in profit.
halbritt 8y ago
I tend to agree. I've been a GCP customer for ~18 months and as recent as a year ago it still felt like very early days for sales and support. Well, actually it still feels like early days for support. The products, however, have been surprisingly good for the most part and seem more mature and well-engineered than their market share would suggest, especially in comparison to Azure. So, I'm of the opinion that if they can figure out how to sell, they'll do quite well.
- pishpash 8y ago
  They need to figure out how to be code complete and ship it, not yap about vaporware that AWS has had for years.
  - halbritt 8y ago
    Such as?
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
While this is just my personal opinion, I view AWS, Azure and GCP as follows: 1. AWS is the clear market leader, tons of services, good support options, but you'll need pretty expert-level ops people to make sure everything is working together securely. You may have to build more plumbing than you think. 2. Azure is great for companies that are already MS shops and it makes lots of MS tech (.Net, SQL Server) super easy to use in the cloud. 3. If I were starting a startup, I would go with GCP. IMO their services are easier to use with a smaller ops team, and they have lots of services that scale more easily as you grow (e.g. Cloud Spanner). But not as good enterprise-level support. I see lots of excitement for GCP in the startup scene, and as these startups become more mature I think the "enterprise-level"-ness of GCP will improve.
- aviv 8y ago
  The complexity of AWS is exactly why it is so successful. It is being pushed by both outside consultants and employees who become the experts within the enterprise. GCP's ease of use is a disadvantage in the big picture.
  - marktangotango 8y ago
    This is a pragmatic and astute observation. This scenario has played out several times in the past.
    - archgoon 8y ago
      > This scenario has played out several times in the past. What examples come to mind?
      - sz4kerto 8y ago
        Oracle.
        gaius 8y ago
        That is what makes Oracles cloud play such a mystery. They had a huge asset in a loyal corps of Oracle DBAs embedded in every large organisation on the planet. Now they are saying “fire those guys and we’ll host your databases”. But maybe those guys will say “nah, Postgres is actually all we need, see ya”.
hodgesrm 8y ago
Assuming you are correct and Google invested heavily that seems to rule out strong profits from GCS at this time. So what exactly is it that Google is doing now that will lead to long-term profitability in a business where revenue is closely tied to scale? Can Google really prevail over Amazon (first mover) and MS Azure (great enterprise chops + Office) based on capital investment alone? Amazon and Azure are not standing still. Both also have an order of magnitude advantage in market share. Finally GCS is not strong in the big growth markets in Asia. For my money Google's best bet is to stay in the game and hope something alters the market in a way that weakens their competitors. That assumes they can double down on the investment to remain viable and recognize the opportunity before others do.
- crazygringo 8y ago
  First, Google doesn't need to prevail, it just needs to get a sizeable enough chunk of the market to make a profit. E.g. even if it's an eternal long-term 33% to AWS, Azure and GCP, it's a rational investment for Google. The market's big enough. Second, Google is clearly betting that its scale will indeed give it a benefit -- the scale of its data centers which include all of Search and everything else (e.g. raw costs for computing and storage being cheaper than competitors), the scale of its investments in machine learning which it makes available on GCP, the scale of its investments in private networking and security, etc. Part of Google's pitch is that it's providing Google-class security and networking which AWS and Azure simply can't match.
  - gaius 8y ago
    even if it's an eternal long-term 33% to AWS, Azure and GCP, it's a rational investment for Google They would need to grow their marketshare ten-fold to be in that position, and they would need to defeat Alibaba on its home turf. It’s not going to happen. GCP could possibly drive IBM and Oracle out of the cloud market, but even that’s unlikely.
pishpash 8y ago
No, five years ago, it would have been too early to call it a disappointment. Now, it is a disappointment, and there will not be 5-10 years for this to course correct, probably only 1-2 years -- if they play the Kubernetes card perfectly. There is an extra dose of disappointment because on technical merits, GCP's basic VM substrate -- Compute Engine and Cloud Storage -- is far superior to AWS even five years ago, but AWS kept their ear to the street, anticipated every managed service and ancillary feature that their customers could have wanted, and executed relentlessly. Google has not mounted even half as vigorous and urgent a response as needed under the circumstances. There is nothing at the outset that would prevent someone from choosing GCP, many might even be predisposed given the reputation of Google's own infrastructure, but when more and more of the tasks that you might want to offload to cloud are still not available or not reliably working on GCP, and you're stuck with operating VM's, you might seriously consider the competitor, and once that decision is made, you are not coming back. It's an execution, and perhaps cultural, problem with Google, not one of technology or market.

shrumm 8y ago

My take on GCP is that they have focus areas like Kubernetes, Spanner, Firebase that they do very well on, but for more generic offerings not so much. For instance, our app uses Postgres 10's native partitioning features, it's REALLY strange to me that Cloud SQL is still on PG 9.6. They also don't communicate effectively on when / if they'll add it which makes planning difficult. AWS on the other hand is already testing PG 11 and has an open schedule in place to their customers can plan ahead.