6 ms·

What are the Vegas odds that they blow the whole thing up if they don't end up #1?

enos_feedler 7y ago
Pretty low considering the growing market size. We are just at the beginning of cloud movement and it’s already generating significant revenue
- scarface74 7y ago
  Revenue != profit. And isn’t that the pitch of every startup? We are worth $billions because the size of the market is $billions x 10 if we only capture $a_small_percentage.
  - enos_feedler 7y ago
    It's hard to believe cloud won't be profitable. You are selling one of the world's greatest engines of innovation (computing) using a proven delivery model (internet services). Combine that with very low execution risk, since big tech has been self-consuming computing as a service over 20 years of growth. It would almost be irresponsible to leave this opportunity on the table. If Google lands in third place $a_small_percentage is actually quite large.
scarface74 7y ago
Given Google’s penchant for cancelling projects and their inability to do anything profitably outside of advertising?
- manigandham 7y ago
  Cloud computing is already extremely profitable, and well above their 10-figure line for a sustainable project. AppEngine has been around for more than a decade. GCP might not catch up to AWS but it's not going away.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Is it profitable for Google?
    - manigandham 7y ago
      Yes.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Your conclusion is based on?
        manigandham 7y ago
        Like I said, it's double-digit billions product line and has a 10+ year history. And internal metrics show lots of profit margin comparable to AWS, although you'll have to find someone to share that with you in person.
        scarface74 7y ago
        So either you have private information (that hopefully you wouldn’t be sharing on HN) or you can provide a public link?
        zelly 7y ago
        Thanks just bought 100k
    - pg_is_a_butt 7y ago
      It IS Google... what do you think all their services run on?
  - blibble 7y ago
    if it was extremely profitable it would be a separate line in their financial statements (rather than being aggregated with other things) it isn't, so draw from that what you will
- busterarm 7y ago
  Not just that. Google simply doesn't have it in their DNA to deliver the kind of high-touch support required of remaining #1 in this business. They've been hiring the pushy sales types to deliver one end of it but not the delivery people required on the other.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Not to mention that Google is so full of “smart people” (tm) that their sales force is made up of people who probably would never stoop low enough to do lift and shifts as phase 1. They would probably want you to move everything to k8s and rewrite your entire stack. As opposed to MS. If a business has a legacy app that requires a 10 year old version of Sql Server running on a 12 year old version of Windows, they will put that in Azure and probably offer extended support for the OS for free.
    - busterarm 7y ago
      Worse...they did this to us not too long ago: They push you to use a Beta feature as it's the "preferred" way of interacting with their internal APIs. Meanwhile they know definitively that there's a race condition in their code when using this feature that will _take down the entire service_. It took down our entire Production project, they weren't forthcoming with any information to get us a fix for several hours (until we started sending nasty escalation emails about our P1 ticket not being handled) and then they blamed us for using a feature that was still in Beta. We'd had literal face to face meetings where they'd told us we need to use this feature. Interestingly enough, we were assigned new reps this week. I wonder if our AM and TAM were laid off.
    - tmpz22 7y ago
      They've recently brought in a bunch of Oracle people to run GCP so, I'm pretty sure anything is on the table at this point.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Bringing in people from Oracle as your sales guys. With the great reputation that Oracle has in most organizations what could possibly go wrong?
nihonium 7y ago
I'd say they wouldn't shut down everything but may stop adding new features.
- pm90 7y ago
  At which point they would quickly become obsolete. Android was a hedge against Apple. GCP is a hedge against AWS. I don't see Google putting the brakes on GCP anytime soon.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    That didn’t work out very well seeing they are still paying Apple a reported $8 - $12 billion a year to be the default search engine and it came out in the Oracle trial that they only made $23 billion in profit off of Android from its inception until the beginning of the trial. Apple makes more from Google in mobile than Google makes from Android.
    - joshuamorton 7y ago
      The beginning of the trial was 2010 or so, so if Android earned Google 23B in 5 years, I imagine it's earned multiples of that in the 10 years since.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        This came out in 2016.... https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN0UZ2W9 https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/... Google's Android operating system has generated revenue of about $31 billion and profit of $22 billion since its release, an Oracle Corp lawyer told a U.S. court hearing the software company's copyright lawsuit against Google.
        joshuamorton 7y ago
        So not at the beginning of the trial then.

Pretty low considering the growing market size. We are just at the beginning of cloud movement and it’s already generating significant revenue

scarface74 7y ago
Revenue != profit. And isn’t that the pitch of every startup? We are worth $billions because the size of the market is $billions x 10 if we only capture $a_small_percentage.
- enos_feedler 7y ago
  It's hard to believe cloud won't be profitable. You are selling one of the world's greatest engines of innovation (computing) using a proven delivery model (internet services). Combine that with very low execution risk, since big tech has been self-consuming computing as a service over 20 years of growth. It would almost be irresponsible to leave this opportunity on the table. If Google lands in third place $a_small_percentage is actually quite large.

scarface74 7y ago

Given Google’s penchant for cancelling projects and their inability to do anything profitably outside of advertising?

manigandham 7y ago
Cloud computing is already extremely profitable, and well above their 10-figure line for a sustainable project. AppEngine has been around for more than a decade. GCP might not catch up to AWS but it's not going away.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Is it profitable for Google?
  - manigandham 7y ago
    Yes.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Your conclusion is based on?
      - manigandham 7y ago
        Like I said, it's double-digit billions product line and has a 10+ year history. And internal metrics show lots of profit margin comparable to AWS, although you'll have to find someone to share that with you in person.
        scarface74 7y ago
        So either you have private information (that hopefully you wouldn’t be sharing on HN) or you can provide a public link?
        zelly 7y ago
        Thanks just bought 100k
  - pg_is_a_butt 7y ago
    It IS Google... what do you think all their services run on?
- blibble 7y ago
  if it was extremely profitable it would be a separate line in their financial statements (rather than being aggregated with other things) it isn't, so draw from that what you will
busterarm 7y ago
Not just that. Google simply doesn't have it in their DNA to deliver the kind of high-touch support required of remaining #1 in this business. They've been hiring the pushy sales types to deliver one end of it but not the delivery people required on the other.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Not to mention that Google is so full of “smart people” (tm) that their sales force is made up of people who probably would never stoop low enough to do lift and shifts as phase 1. They would probably want you to move everything to k8s and rewrite your entire stack. As opposed to MS. If a business has a legacy app that requires a 10 year old version of Sql Server running on a 12 year old version of Windows, they will put that in Azure and probably offer extended support for the OS for free.
  - busterarm 7y ago
    Worse...they did this to us not too long ago: They push you to use a Beta feature as it's the "preferred" way of interacting with their internal APIs. Meanwhile they know definitively that there's a race condition in their code when using this feature that will _take down the entire service_. It took down our entire Production project, they weren't forthcoming with any information to get us a fix for several hours (until we started sending nasty escalation emails about our P1 ticket not being handled) and then they blamed us for using a feature that was still in Beta. We'd had literal face to face meetings where they'd told us we need to use this feature. Interestingly enough, we were assigned new reps this week. I wonder if our AM and TAM were laid off.
  - tmpz22 7y ago
    They've recently brought in a bunch of Oracle people to run GCP so, I'm pretty sure anything is on the table at this point.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Bringing in people from Oracle as your sales guys. With the great reputation that Oracle has in most organizations what could possibly go wrong?

nihonium 7y ago

I'd say they wouldn't shut down everything but may stop adding new features.

pm90 7y ago
At which point they would quickly become obsolete. Android was a hedge against Apple. GCP is a hedge against AWS. I don't see Google putting the brakes on GCP anytime soon.
- scarface74 7y ago
  That didn’t work out very well seeing they are still paying Apple a reported $8 - $12 billion a year to be the default search engine and it came out in the Oracle trial that they only made $23 billion in profit off of Android from its inception until the beginning of the trial. Apple makes more from Google in mobile than Google makes from Android.
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    The beginning of the trial was 2010 or so, so if Android earned Google 23B in 5 years, I imagine it's earned multiples of that in the 10 years since.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      This came out in 2016.... https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN0UZ2W9 https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/... Google's Android operating system has generated revenue of about $31 billion and profit of $22 billion since its release, an Oracle Corp lawyer told a U.S. court hearing the software company's copyright lawsuit against Google.
      - joshuamorton 7y ago
        So not at the beginning of the trial then.