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AppEngine has had scale-to-zero for 15 years, but instead of having a coherent product strategy, why not just launch a different competing product every year wh

AppEngine has had scale-to-zero for 15 years, but instead of having a coherent product strategy, why not just launch a different competing product every year which is missing features that already exist? AppEngine vs Cloud Functions vs Cloud Run, the reasons these all exist at the same time is not because it makes any sense for customers, but because Google PMs get promoted for launching new things rather than supporting existing products.

Axsuul 6y ago
I disagree. App Engine is nothing like Cloud Functions/Run. The former is a better fit for your entire app stack (think Heroku) while the latter is for ad-hoc. As for Cloud Functions and Cloud Run, the way you deploy is completely different. Cloud Run is strictly meant for containers.
- mayank 6y ago
  I don't think the 3 products are serving as diverse a set of use cases as you think... > The former is a better fit for your entire app stack (think Heroku) while the latter is for ad-hoc. There's no product reason why App Engine couldn't start deploying custom containers. > As for Cloud Functions and Cloud Run, the way you deploy is completely different. Cloud Run is strictly meant for containers. AWS Lambda (arguably the "inspiration" for Cloud Functions) just announced support for custom containers. Cloud Functions could too. And then you essentially have Cloud Run.
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    > There's no product reason why App Engine couldn't start deploying custom containers. There better not be because it already does: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/flexible/custom-runtimes https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/flexible/custom-runt...
- ditonal 6y ago
  Actually, App Engine is a LOT like Cloud Functions/Run. You have some code that you want to run in the Cloud and you don't want to worry about server ops. Whether that's your "whole stack" or something "ad-hoc" is a totally arbitrary distinction. Your "whole stack" will almost certainly involve external concerns, and your "ad-hoc" concerns will almost certainly grow in complexity until they converge on the same spot. AppEngine is also running containers via gvisor. The distinction is being driven by PMs and marketers but not by the needs of customers. What end-users need is one well-supported tool, not 8 separate tools with uncertainty about which one will receive future support and matrices and flowcharts to decide between them.
  - zeroxfe 6y ago
    > The distinction is being driven by PMs and marketers but not by the needs of customers. This is not true. It came directly from customer needs -- customers were looking for an effortless way to run containers without having to deal with orchestrators like k8s or be locked into frameworks like AppEngine. I've used Cloud Run for a bunch of projects, and it's fantastic.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  > App Engine is nothing like Cloud Functions/Run. This isn't true. App Engine Flexible is in fact very similar to Cloud Run, and my understanding is that it runs on the same infrastructure. In fact, App Engine Flexible "Custom Runtime", which lets you load a docker container in App Engine, is very similar to Cloud Run. FWIW, though, as a user of App Engine Flexible for Node, I'm very glad this Cloud Run option now exists.
  - patwolf 6y ago
    I've switched newer projects from app engine flexible to cloud run. I do think the underlying infrastructure is slightly different but for the better. If I remember correctly, app engine was using VMs vs pure containers. Deploys to app engine took me 10 min start to finish, but cloud run is around 3. I used to use a combination of app engine standard and flexible depending on requirements, but I feel like cloud run gives me the benefits of both.
- wdb 6y ago
  I would be interested in something like AWS Lambda@Edge or Cloud Workers from Google. Love to run a simple script close the visitor's location e.g. from Belgium DC instead of US DC etc
  - nojvek 6y ago
    That would be nice although Google CDN even without any compute is pretty slow compared to cloudflare. Google has many data centers around the world. I don’t see why they can have cloud run automatically select the data center closest to the user and spin up the container there. That would deffo solve a lot of problems.
baskire 6y ago
Worse than that. Its AppEngine Standard vs AppEngine Flex vs Cloud Functions vs Cloud Run vs KNative (Cloud Run, but different). Oh and if you used AppEngine Standard, you can't move to Flex as Flex came with a whole new set of libraries. And Flex to CloudRun didn't exactly have a seamless migration. Along the way they changed multiple internals with deprecation causing code base changes. Such-as Memecache, ImageAPI, Monitoring price changes. I can't imagine any enterprise who's used the ecosystem continuing. The sheer number of architecture impacting changes leads to huge operational overhead costs to maintain applications running on this infrastructure.
- landerwust 6y ago
  Everything above. Friends don't let friends use App Engine, and by extension, fringe GCloud services they could break or shitcan at literally any moment The technology of a vendor is way less important than its culture. So far Gcloud seems to understand that. Maybe the App Engine team is outside that org
  - jkaplowitz 6y ago
    > Everything above. Friends don't let friends use App Engine, and by extension, fringe GCloud services they could break or shitcan at literally any moment Not sure why you think they can shitcan them at literally any moment. Although GCP's track record of deprecation is of course far worse than AWS's, they do make and adhere to promises in their terms of service that, in most cases, they will give at least 12 months before deprecating services which have reached general availability. This includes both App Engine and Cloud Run, minus any features that have not yet reached general availability and minus one very fair documented exception for App Engine. Details: https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation https://cloud.google.com/terms https://cloud.google.com/terms <-- search for "Discontinuation of Services" Disclosure: I used to work for Google, including the GCP team, but I haven't worked for Google in over 5 years and am not speaking for Google here.
    - baskire 6y ago
jacques_chester 6y ago
As it happens, Cloud Run is App Engine under the hood. It's a Knative-compatible skin. Cloud Run for Anthos is a different product, which is the OSS Knative code running on GKE.

Axsuul 6y ago

I disagree. App Engine is nothing like Cloud Functions/Run. The former is a better fit for your entire app stack (think Heroku) while the latter is for ad-hoc. As for Cloud Functions and Cloud Run, the way you deploy is completely different. Cloud Run is strictly meant for containers.

mayank 6y ago
I don't think the 3 products are serving as diverse a set of use cases as you think... > The former is a better fit for your entire app stack (think Heroku) while the latter is for ad-hoc. There's no product reason why App Engine couldn't start deploying custom containers. > As for Cloud Functions and Cloud Run, the way you deploy is completely different. Cloud Run is strictly meant for containers. AWS Lambda (arguably the "inspiration" for Cloud Functions) just announced support for custom containers. Cloud Functions could too. And then you essentially have Cloud Run.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  > There's no product reason why App Engine couldn't start deploying custom containers. There better not be because it already does: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/flexible/custom-runtimes https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/flexible/custom-runt...
ditonal 6y ago
Actually, App Engine is a LOT like Cloud Functions/Run. You have some code that you want to run in the Cloud and you don't want to worry about server ops. Whether that's your "whole stack" or something "ad-hoc" is a totally arbitrary distinction. Your "whole stack" will almost certainly involve external concerns, and your "ad-hoc" concerns will almost certainly grow in complexity until they converge on the same spot. AppEngine is also running containers via gvisor. The distinction is being driven by PMs and marketers but not by the needs of customers. What end-users need is one well-supported tool, not 8 separate tools with uncertainty about which one will receive future support and matrices and flowcharts to decide between them.
- zeroxfe 6y ago
  > The distinction is being driven by PMs and marketers but not by the needs of customers. This is not true. It came directly from customer needs -- customers were looking for an effortless way to run containers without having to deal with orchestrators like k8s or be locked into frameworks like AppEngine. I've used Cloud Run for a bunch of projects, and it's fantastic.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
> App Engine is nothing like Cloud Functions/Run. This isn't true. App Engine Flexible is in fact very similar to Cloud Run, and my understanding is that it runs on the same infrastructure. In fact, App Engine Flexible "Custom Runtime", which lets you load a docker container in App Engine, is very similar to Cloud Run. FWIW, though, as a user of App Engine Flexible for Node, I'm very glad this Cloud Run option now exists.
- patwolf 6y ago
  I've switched newer projects from app engine flexible to cloud run. I do think the underlying infrastructure is slightly different but for the better. If I remember correctly, app engine was using VMs vs pure containers. Deploys to app engine took me 10 min start to finish, but cloud run is around 3. I used to use a combination of app engine standard and flexible depending on requirements, but I feel like cloud run gives me the benefits of both.
wdb 6y ago
I would be interested in something like AWS Lambda@Edge or Cloud Workers from Google. Love to run a simple script close the visitor's location e.g. from Belgium DC instead of US DC etc
- nojvek 6y ago
  That would be nice although Google CDN even without any compute is pretty slow compared to cloudflare. Google has many data centers around the world. I don’t see why they can have cloud run automatically select the data center closest to the user and spin up the container there. That would deffo solve a lot of problems.

baskire 6y ago

Worse than that. Its AppEngine Standard vs AppEngine Flex vs Cloud Functions vs Cloud Run vs KNative (Cloud Run, but different). Oh and if you used AppEngine Standard, you can't move to Flex as Flex came with a whole new set of libraries. And Flex to CloudRun didn't exactly have a seamless migration. Along the way they changed multiple internals with deprecation causing code base changes. Such-as Memecache, ImageAPI, Monitoring price changes. I can't imagine any enterprise who's used the ecosystem continuing. The sheer number of architecture impacting changes leads to huge operational overhead costs to maintain applications running on this infrastructure.

landerwust 6y ago
Everything above. Friends don't let friends use App Engine, and by extension, fringe GCloud services they could break or shitcan at literally any moment The technology of a vendor is way less important than its culture. So far Gcloud seems to understand that. Maybe the App Engine team is outside that org
- jkaplowitz 6y ago
  > Everything above. Friends don't let friends use App Engine, and by extension, fringe GCloud services they could break or shitcan at literally any moment Not sure why you think they can shitcan them at literally any moment. Although GCP's track record of deprecation is of course far worse than AWS's, they do make and adhere to promises in their terms of service that, in most cases, they will give at least 12 months before deprecating services which have reached general availability. This includes both App Engine and Cloud Run, minus any features that have not yet reached general availability and minus one very fair documented exception for App Engine. Details: https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation https://cloud.google.com/terms https://cloud.google.com/terms <-- search for "Discontinuation of Services" Disclosure: I used to work for Google, including the GCP team, but I haven't worked for Google in over 5 years and am not speaking for Google here.
  - baskire 6y ago

jacques_chester 6y ago

As it happens, Cloud Run is App Engine under the hood. It's a Knative-compatible skin. Cloud Run for Anthos is a different product, which is the OSS Knative code running on GKE.