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Former front-end dev of this UI here. This article makes the assumption that Google's primary goal is performance/page load. It's not. Feature parity and dev sp

Former front-end dev of this UI here. This article makes the assumption that Google's primary goal is performance/page load. It's not. Feature parity and dev speed is. With a gigantic app like Cloud with hundreds of developers, there are massive technical hurdles surrounding things like independent releases, split bundles, and technical debt. Google's business model for Cloud is b2b. The bottom line for getting b2b contracts normally comes down to requested features (among other things). Page load time doesn't factor as much comparatively, so these priorities do make sense. Not to say performance isn't on everyone's roadmap, but Google has and will continue to make strategic decisions that sacrifice performance over things like dev speed.

freediver 6y ago
Google seems to fail to realize that cloud b2b starts with b2developer. A one single developer. Create an environment that developers love, and these developers will find ways to make b2b happen. Sell bottom up. (and in case anyone from gcp is reading, not only the interface is atrociously slow - which makes me doubt the quality of engineering on the infrastructure side of things that I am supposed to be paying for - but the quota system is beyond terrible as well. Just the other day I wanted to experiment with youtube api to see what it can do, and it made me fill a quota increase form with at least two dozen questions almost asking what is my business plan with this - do you want users to use the api or not?)
- themacguffinman 6y ago
  Even solo developers don't really choose a cloud platform based on the zippiness of the web UI. I've used Azure and briefly dabbled in AWS's web UIs, they're not better and are worse in some cases. Critical administration tasks are going to be wrapped and reused in CLI, the web UI is usually for ad-hoc stuff. This is a pretty core staple of the b2b market: customers, even small ones, respond mostly to price & features that save a significant amount of time & money; Sorry but a sluggish web UI while annoying won't move the needle much on the bottom line.
- harpratap 6y ago
  Not sure which awesome company you work at, but in most organizations infra is a cost center, and thus the decisions related to it are mostly done by managers, not developers. And this is why AWS sells and not Heroku.

freediver 6y ago

Google seems to fail to realize that cloud b2b starts with b2developer. A one single developer. Create an environment that developers love, and these developers will find ways to make b2b happen. Sell bottom up. (and in case anyone from gcp is reading, not only the interface is atrociously slow - which makes me doubt the quality of engineering on the infrastructure side of things that I am supposed to be paying for - but the quota system is beyond terrible as well. Just the other day I wanted to experiment with youtube api to see what it can do, and it made me fill a quota increase form with at least two dozen questions almost asking what is my business plan with this - do you want users to use the api or not?)

themacguffinman 6y ago
Even solo developers don't really choose a cloud platform based on the zippiness of the web UI. I've used Azure and briefly dabbled in AWS's web UIs, they're not better and are worse in some cases. Critical administration tasks are going to be wrapped and reused in CLI, the web UI is usually for ad-hoc stuff. This is a pretty core staple of the b2b market: customers, even small ones, respond mostly to price & features that save a significant amount of time & money; Sorry but a sluggish web UI while annoying won't move the needle much on the bottom line.
harpratap 6y ago
Not sure which awesome company you work at, but in most organizations infra is a cost center, and thus the decisions related to it are mostly done by managers, not developers. And this is why AWS sells and not Heroku.