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I hate to be the boy who cries "Google will cancel this service", but this offering just seems strange. With a very low price point coupled with not that huge

I hate to be the boy who cries "Google will cancel this service", but this offering just seems strange. With a very low price point coupled with not that huge of a user base, this will end up making how much for Google? $1MM/month? $10MM/month? Either would be negligible for them.

zelly 7y ago
Like others said, subscription products are very profitable. The target demographic for this has disposable income and would see this as an investment. A lot of people will sign up and never use it. Don't forget that the alternative was just free. For all we know this is the way they're breaking even on Colab to prevent shutting it down.
- Tenoke 7y ago
  Why would people signup and never use it? I'd expect most of those people to just use the free Colab.
  - zelly 7y ago
    People who need it for one project, use it heavily for a month or two, then forget to turn off billing.
Tenoke 7y ago
Unlike most other products it won't matter as much here if they cancel it. It's hard to be too dependant on an in-browser stateless tool for prototyping. You aren't going to be running service off it or even have a permanent set up so if they cancel it you'd have very little to transition from.
dannyw 7y ago
Colab Pro is probably the "we want to give verified non-bots more access, but need a small monetary cost to actually stop abuse". The collection of a credit card isn't just monetary: it also provides some sort of anti-abuse as most people have a limited number of credit cards; and even a bulk credit farm operation has a monetary cost per card (I read the going rate for a hacked card even is $100 ish). Aged Google Accounts go for $1-2 from account farmers these days.
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lrem 7y ago
As a Googler using this internally, I'm pretty sure the project itself will live for quite a while longer. I have no clue about the public offering, but I don't think money is what they are after in this.

zelly 7y ago

Like others said, subscription products are very profitable. The target demographic for this has disposable income and would see this as an investment. A lot of people will sign up and never use it. Don't forget that the alternative was just free. For all we know this is the way they're breaking even on Colab to prevent shutting it down.

Tenoke 7y ago
Why would people signup and never use it? I'd expect most of those people to just use the free Colab.
- zelly 7y ago
  People who need it for one project, use it heavily for a month or two, then forget to turn off billing.

Tenoke 7y ago

Unlike most other products it won't matter as much here if they cancel it. It's hard to be too dependant on an in-browser stateless tool for prototyping. You aren't going to be running service off it or even have a permanent set up so if they cancel it you'd have very little to transition from.

dannyw 7y ago

Colab Pro is probably the "we want to give verified non-bots more access, but need a small monetary cost to actually stop abuse". The collection of a credit card isn't just monetary: it also provides some sort of anti-abuse as most people have a limited number of credit cards; and even a bulk credit farm operation has a monetary cost per card (I read the going rate for a hacked card even is $100 ish). Aged Google Accounts go for $1-2 from account farmers these days.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

lrem 7y ago

As a Googler using this internally, I'm pretty sure the project itself will live for quite a while longer. I have no clue about the public offering, but I don't think money is what they are after in this.