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I was involved a bidding war between GCP and AWS where each was offering a healthy six figures in free credits to move our business to their cloud. GCP was offe

I was involved a bidding war between GCP and AWS where each was offering a healthy six figures in free credits to move our business to their cloud. GCP was offering nearly 3x as many but ultimately I didn’t want to move to a service where there was a chance offerings were going to get the axe with no warning. Their reputation has indeed hurt them — at least in one instance.

rednerrus 6y ago
Same in my last role.
katzgrau 6y ago
A fair percentage of companies exploring my SaaS company as potential clients are doing so because Google doesn't provide any support / insight for practically any issue they may have.
- Aperocky 6y ago
  As someone working for one of its competitor, I'm glad that waking up at night and solving a customer's problem (and/or our problem) is helping in a tangible way.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  I work for a company which helps huge enterprises move to the cloud, and we found a lot of places opting for Azure because their experience with GCP support was really bad. These are people paying for the top tier of support too.
fwip 6y ago
What services got the axe with no warning? It seems like for all of the Google ex-products I can think of, they gave advance notice of at least a year.
- vezycash 6y ago
  They are talking about the fear of their account being terminated without warning. Turns out the fear is not unfounded see a confession by an ex GCP Googler: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24572131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24572131
- master-litty 6y ago
  The notice of complete retirement is good, it's the notice of deprecation that is poor. We can't reliably tell whether a product will be supported for the next N years. It feels non-deterministic.
- cm2187 6y ago
  A year is an eternity for a start up. But it is a really short time to a large company with complex integrations, a massive book of work and budgets being trimmed every week.
  - IggleSniggle 6y ago
    Exactly. A year is a blink of an eye for an established company.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  A year isn't much for a non-startup business. Google has also increased prices in the past (maps, kubernetes) while AWS has afaik never increased prices on anything.
- nimih 6y ago
  I've worked at a couple "mid-sized" financial companies (i.e., not "tech" companies, but with a healthy need for various computer products and services) throughout my career where migration plans from one technology or provider to another were measured in years, and would sometimes get extended to the order of decades for larger migrations (e.g. moving core business functionality off a legacy mainframe system). A year or two notice that you'll need to migrate something important is really not feasible for a lot of businesses who would otherwise be very interested in outsourcing to a cloud provider.
jjoonathan 6y ago
It's every manager's worst nightmare to be on the other side of Google's legendary wall of silence.
judge2020 6y ago
I mean AWS does the same thing - mine crypto using credits to speedrun getting your account terminated. The only difference with GCP is that they have a reputation for this.
- true_religion 6y ago
  Crypto mining on a free trial is just unethical.
  - nurettin 6y ago
    for(;;); is unethical.
  - maest 6y ago
    This is a question philosophers have struggled with for millennia.
  - judge2020 6y ago
    Regular credits as well. I'm speaking more about when an attacker mines monero on a compromised server, and I wasn't talking about products being axed (but I now realize the OP was).
- ianai 6y ago
  They likely meant how google axes whole products like aws with no recourse for customers. Amazon probably would not do that to a product like aws in a million years.
wombatpm 6y ago
I was part of a focus group a year ago. The general consensus was Google might be great, but everyone felt better about using AWS for real world projects. MS Azure was a close second. Ironic how Google has squandered their goodwill.
- dimitrios1 6y ago
  Not to heap it on with anecdotes here, but I am also part of this group. I was working with the platform team as part of a marketing tech org that sees half the us pop in monthly visits. We were deciding between signing a long term deal with AWS or GCP. We wanted to use k8s at the time too and even realized that GCP was far superior in this space versus ECS / EKS. However support, and product lifespan was the deciding factors. Similar factors in deciding between Office 365 or GSuite. Different products, same Google story.

rednerrus 6y ago

Same in my last role.

katzgrau 6y ago

A fair percentage of companies exploring my SaaS company as potential clients are doing so because Google doesn't provide any support / insight for practically any issue they may have.

Aperocky 6y ago
As someone working for one of its competitor, I'm glad that waking up at night and solving a customer's problem (and/or our problem) is helping in a tangible way.
notsureaboutpg 6y ago
I work for a company which helps huge enterprises move to the cloud, and we found a lot of places opting for Azure because their experience with GCP support was really bad. These are people paying for the top tier of support too.

fwip 6y ago

What services got the axe with no warning? It seems like for all of the Google ex-products I can think of, they gave advance notice of at least a year.

vezycash 6y ago
They are talking about the fear of their account being terminated without warning. Turns out the fear is not unfounded see a confession by an ex GCP Googler: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24572131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24572131
master-litty 6y ago
The notice of complete retirement is good, it's the notice of deprecation that is poor. We can't reliably tell whether a product will be supported for the next N years. It feels non-deterministic.
cm2187 6y ago
A year is an eternity for a start up. But it is a really short time to a large company with complex integrations, a massive book of work and budgets being trimmed every week.
- IggleSniggle 6y ago
  Exactly. A year is a blink of an eye for an established company.
marcinzm 6y ago
A year isn't much for a non-startup business. Google has also increased prices in the past (maps, kubernetes) while AWS has afaik never increased prices on anything.
nimih 6y ago
I've worked at a couple "mid-sized" financial companies (i.e., not "tech" companies, but with a healthy need for various computer products and services) throughout my career where migration plans from one technology or provider to another were measured in years, and would sometimes get extended to the order of decades for larger migrations (e.g. moving core business functionality off a legacy mainframe system). A year or two notice that you'll need to migrate something important is really not feasible for a lot of businesses who would otherwise be very interested in outsourcing to a cloud provider.

jjoonathan 6y ago

It's every manager's worst nightmare to be on the other side of Google's legendary wall of silence.

judge2020 6y ago

I mean AWS does the same thing - mine crypto using credits to speedrun getting your account terminated. The only difference with GCP is that they have a reputation for this.

true_religion 6y ago
Crypto mining on a free trial is just unethical.
- nurettin 6y ago
  for(;;); is unethical.
- maest 6y ago
  This is a question philosophers have struggled with for millennia.
- judge2020 6y ago
  Regular credits as well. I'm speaking more about when an attacker mines monero on a compromised server, and I wasn't talking about products being axed (but I now realize the OP was).
ianai 6y ago
They likely meant how google axes whole products like aws with no recourse for customers. Amazon probably would not do that to a product like aws in a million years.

wombatpm 6y ago

I was part of a focus group a year ago. The general consensus was Google might be great, but everyone felt better about using AWS for real world projects. MS Azure was a close second. Ironic how Google has squandered their goodwill.

dimitrios1 6y ago
Not to heap it on with anecdotes here, but I am also part of this group. I was working with the platform team as part of a marketing tech org that sees half the us pop in monthly visits. We were deciding between signing a long term deal with AWS or GCP. We wanted to use k8s at the time too and even realized that GCP was far superior in this space versus ECS / EKS. However support, and product lifespan was the deciding factors. Similar factors in deciding between Office 365 or GSuite. Different products, same Google story.