7 ms·

> Alternatives: I don't trust Google services for anything critical In the case of GCP, the product is the product rather than the user, so there's a greater e

> Alternatives: I don't trust Google services for anything critical In the case of GCP, the product is the product rather than the user, so there's a greater expectation that it'll not get shut down or that pricing will change easily. Further, they're obviously committed to being competitive with AWS which requires that they behave similarly.

scarface74 7y ago
On the other hand.... see maps.
- halbritt 7y ago
  On the other hand of what? Maps is a consumer facing service for which revenue is derived from the data collected and advertising. That business model is nothing like selling commodity compute services to enterprises. If anything, I think GSuite is a portent of how Google will treat GCP. That is, the set of products has been relatively and consistently stable for quite some time, which has driven fairly decent adoption into the enterprise market. There've a couple of product shifts, specifically around voice, hangout, and chat, but that seems to settled at this point. I speculate that the changes that have raised the most ire have been around gmail, which I suspect has a fragmented product management team as it's both a free consumer service getting monetized through ad revenue as well as an enterprise product sold directly to customers.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Maps is a consumer facing service for which revenue is derived from the data collected and advertising. That business model is nothing like selling commodity compute services to enterprises. So selling access to an API that businesses depend on is nothing like selling access to other resources that businesses depend on? https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/features/google-maps-apis-new-pricing-impact-1907242 https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/features/google-maps-apis-new-... Prices have gone up as much as 14 times in certain scenarios
    - halbritt 7y ago
      That's correct. Selling access to the Google maps API is wholly superfluous to Google's business model. Certainly, it doesn't clock anywhere near a billion in revenue. Prices have gone up because Google doesn't have any interest in sustaining the product. The total addressable market is miniscule by comparison to cloud or even enterprise productivity apps.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Shouldn’t that also give you pause that Google is known not to care about products that are not its main revenue driver and will abandon them? It doesn’t matter how large the “addressable market” is if Google doesn’t have the will or talent to compete. Social is also a large market, how did that work out for Google? Isn’t that the entire pitch of every startup? “If we just get 10% of the market, we will be huge”. And “revenue” is meaningless is GCP profitable? There was a submission on the front page of HN yesterday about Google’s management not being happy about how GCP waS doing and they have three years to turn it around or “lose funding”.
        halbritt 7y ago
        The lack of ease with which one gets into and out of the cloud computing business will preclude Google from killing off the GCP products with the same wanton disregard for customers as they demonstrated with social and others. At worst, they'll sell off or divest the business entirely. They'll expose themselves to tremendous liability if they attempt to wind it down like their other properties.
        scarface74 7y ago
        It doesn't even matter as much if Google gets out of "cloud" as it matters if Google decides to kill one of its cloud offering that you depend on. If I were on GCP and building a service that is using 5 Google features one of them happened to be the Maps API and the other 4 came under the "Cloud" umbrella, it would be little solace that Maps wasn't part of GCP when they raised the prices 15x. On the other hand, AWS announced something as minor as that they were discontinuing one form of accessing publicly available S3 urls that was deprecated in 2010 for the newer one. After a vocal outcry from the internet about how many websites that it would break, they backtracked: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-s3-path-deprecation-plan-the-rest-of-the-story/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-s3-path-deprecation-... On the otherhand, how many Urls were broken when Google discontinued it's link shorterning service? Google has shown time and time again that it can't be relied upon for any important infrastructure.
calpaterson 7y ago
(Article author here) Unfortunately my experiences with GCP have been fairly mixed. One place I worked had a number of problems with managed databases going AWOL on GCP. Also the GCP panel is truly awful, much much worse than the AWS console.
- abawany 7y ago
  I have to wonder if this depends on one's familiarity with the respective products. I started with GCP and then used AWS and found the latter to be way more confusing and convoluted than GCP. The forced daily logouts on AWS added another element of hassle to the mix.
- halbritt 7y ago
  My experiences with GCP have been pretty good, most of those experiences were with GKE. In many ways, their products are superior to AWS. At the very least, they have a different approach to offering cloud services rather than simply attempting to copy AWS offerings. However, their support is absolute shit and they're absolutely devoid of the customer first mentality that AWS demonstrates.
bcrosby95 7y ago
https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/google-reportedly-set-ambitious-goal-and-possible-deadline-for-gcp https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/google-reportedly-set-ambitio... Doesn't matter what is the product. They're ready to kick GCP to the curb if it doesn't perform up to expectations. I wouldn't host anything important on it.

scarface74 7y ago

On the other hand.... see maps.

halbritt 7y ago
On the other hand of what? Maps is a consumer facing service for which revenue is derived from the data collected and advertising. That business model is nothing like selling commodity compute services to enterprises. If anything, I think GSuite is a portent of how Google will treat GCP. That is, the set of products has been relatively and consistently stable for quite some time, which has driven fairly decent adoption into the enterprise market. There've a couple of product shifts, specifically around voice, hangout, and chat, but that seems to settled at this point. I speculate that the changes that have raised the most ire have been around gmail, which I suspect has a fragmented product management team as it's both a free consumer service getting monetized through ad revenue as well as an enterprise product sold directly to customers.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Maps is a consumer facing service for which revenue is derived from the data collected and advertising. That business model is nothing like selling commodity compute services to enterprises. So selling access to an API that businesses depend on is nothing like selling access to other resources that businesses depend on? https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/features/google-maps-apis-new-pricing-impact-1907242 https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/features/google-maps-apis-new-... Prices have gone up as much as 14 times in certain scenarios
  - halbritt 7y ago
    That's correct. Selling access to the Google maps API is wholly superfluous to Google's business model. Certainly, it doesn't clock anywhere near a billion in revenue. Prices have gone up because Google doesn't have any interest in sustaining the product. The total addressable market is miniscule by comparison to cloud or even enterprise productivity apps.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Shouldn’t that also give you pause that Google is known not to care about products that are not its main revenue driver and will abandon them? It doesn’t matter how large the “addressable market” is if Google doesn’t have the will or talent to compete. Social is also a large market, how did that work out for Google? Isn’t that the entire pitch of every startup? “If we just get 10% of the market, we will be huge”. And “revenue” is meaningless is GCP profitable? There was a submission on the front page of HN yesterday about Google’s management not being happy about how GCP waS doing and they have three years to turn it around or “lose funding”.
      - halbritt 7y ago
        The lack of ease with which one gets into and out of the cloud computing business will preclude Google from killing off the GCP products with the same wanton disregard for customers as they demonstrated with social and others. At worst, they'll sell off or divest the business entirely. They'll expose themselves to tremendous liability if they attempt to wind it down like their other properties.
        scarface74 7y ago
        It doesn't even matter as much if Google gets out of "cloud" as it matters if Google decides to kill one of its cloud offering that you depend on. If I were on GCP and building a service that is using 5 Google features one of them happened to be the Maps API and the other 4 came under the "Cloud" umbrella, it would be little solace that Maps wasn't part of GCP when they raised the prices 15x. On the other hand, AWS announced something as minor as that they were discontinuing one form of accessing publicly available S3 urls that was deprecated in 2010 for the newer one. After a vocal outcry from the internet about how many websites that it would break, they backtracked: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-s3-path-deprecation-plan-the-rest-of-the-story/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-s3-path-deprecation-... On the otherhand, how many Urls were broken when Google discontinued it's link shorterning service? Google has shown time and time again that it can't be relied upon for any important infrastructure.

calpaterson 7y ago

(Article author here) Unfortunately my experiences with GCP have been fairly mixed. One place I worked had a number of problems with managed databases going AWOL on GCP. Also the GCP panel is truly awful, much much worse than the AWS console.

abawany 7y ago
I have to wonder if this depends on one's familiarity with the respective products. I started with GCP and then used AWS and found the latter to be way more confusing and convoluted than GCP. The forced daily logouts on AWS added another element of hassle to the mix.
halbritt 7y ago
My experiences with GCP have been pretty good, most of those experiences were with GKE. In many ways, their products are superior to AWS. At the very least, they have a different approach to offering cloud services rather than simply attempting to copy AWS offerings. However, their support is absolute shit and they're absolutely devoid of the customer first mentality that AWS demonstrates.

bcrosby95 7y ago

https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/google-reportedly-set-ambitious-goal-and-possible-deadline-for-gcp https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/google-reportedly-set-ambitio... Doesn't matter what is the product. They're ready to kick GCP to the curb if it doesn't perform up to expectations. I wouldn't host anything important on it.