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The big difference was that AWS left behind a trail of vocal, satisfied customers. Google has left behind a trail of de-platformed, de-monetized, (as you point

The big difference was that AWS left behind a trail of vocal, satisfied customers. Google has left behind a trail of de-platformed, de-monetized, (as you pointed out) re-priced, discontinued, API-changed, and otherwise angry customers. Genuine brand value -- having customers trust you -- counts for a lot. AWS started in the red and quickly moved into the black. I was very skeptical the first time I used AWS, since the whole concept was new. I was converted after a few weeks of it working really well. I stayed converted with now a decade of it still working really well, of having good customer service, and of having 99.[many nines] uptime. Google Cloud went the opposite way. Google started with all the developer good-will in the world, and I really wanted it to succeed. After a half-dozen serious failures, I won't touch it. I know dozens of developers who will never use Google Cloud again. I'm not sure how Google will dig itself out of that one. At this point, it feels like it's throwing bad money after good.

gryz 6y ago
Is there a list of examples of what they did? Or something alike to learn more about this.
thomascgalvin 6y ago
Google has a terrible reputation for everything aside from search and email. People now expect them to cancel, abandone, or otherwise fuck up any product they announce. The news about their Stadia team being disbanded wasn't even a surprise; it felt like an inevitability. Even from a simple CYA perspective, I could never recommend my customers build their product on top of a Google platform.
- petercooper 6y ago
  People now expect them to cancel, abandone, or otherwise fuck up any product they announce. Certainly true for me. They could release the most amazing new thing tomorrow and I'd wait 6 months to see if it's actually going to go anywhere. That's branding and their brand, while not bad, is certainly not "dependable."
- ac29 6y ago
  How many services with >$10B in revenue/yr have been closed by Google?
  - woofie11 6y ago
    Well, the only ones it's had with >$10b revenue historically are advertising, and literally like two or three products. You can't generalize from a small n. But there are plenty of horror stories of being deplatformed by Google advertising too. Those make money. There's a limited time window during which Google Cloud can bleed money. If that runs out before it's profitable, businesses on it can say "bye bye," face bitrot, or see huge markups due to lock-in.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
FWIW, I have a lot of familiarity and usage with both AWS and GCP, and at present I am a very satisfied GCP customer, and I've seen marked improvement with how they manage their offerings over the past 2 years.
- woofie11 6y ago
  And I just got f-ed by the Google Cloud team this morning, albeit their Workspace division and not GCP. I have a GSuite legacy account for my personal domain name. Most of my family is on it. It was free. I just tried to set up Google Voice on one of the accounts. I learned that they silently disabled setting up new phone numbers in 2019. And on my main account, long distance calling stopped working about a month ago. No notice, no nothing. It's been gradually bit-rotting for years, but this is kinda a big deal. My kids can't get phone numbers associated with their main Google account because I set it up when Google was supporting personal domains? That's obnoxious. Support goes nowhere, naturally. Google says "Use workspace support." Workspace says "Upgrade to have support." And obviously, pricing is prohibitive given that this is now a B2B offering, and my whole family is on the domain. Cousins, aunties, and all. $6/user/month gets super-expensive super-fast. Stuff like this means Google loses millions of dollars of business elsewhere. I keep swiping my credit card for Amazon, as does my company.
  - hg35h4 6y ago
    > I have a GSuite legacy account for my personal domain name. Most of my family is on it. It was free. Oh boy they've been really trying to push people off GSuite legacy hard. I started missing incoming emails, testing would show a server error about a high email flow for maybe a dozen per day. Zero support, and they erased my posts on their support board. You can't change the primary domain as free, you can't use any email diag tools, you can't do anything. I ended up moving to Zoho. Sure it's not free, but it's not outrageous for personal/family use. Decent migration tools as well. It really started a hard de-Googlification. I nix any chatter about using Google at work now as well.
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    I certainly do fault Google for what they're doing (especially the "long distance calling stopped working about a month ago. No notice, no nothing." part). At the same time, free services is part of the problem, and I'm glad Google is shutting some of this stuff down. If anything, I think Google's biggest issue in the enterprise has been they just haven't had the corporate DNA to do enterprise-level support well for paying customers. IMO they've improved in that regard in the past couple years.

gryz 6y ago

Is there a list of examples of what they did? Or something alike to learn more about this.

thomascgalvin 6y ago

Google has a terrible reputation for everything aside from search and email. People now expect them to cancel, abandone, or otherwise fuck up any product they announce. The news about their Stadia team being disbanded wasn't even a surprise; it felt like an inevitability. Even from a simple CYA perspective, I could never recommend my customers build their product on top of a Google platform.

petercooper 6y ago
People now expect them to cancel, abandone, or otherwise fuck up any product they announce. Certainly true for me. They could release the most amazing new thing tomorrow and I'd wait 6 months to see if it's actually going to go anywhere. That's branding and their brand, while not bad, is certainly not "dependable."
ac29 6y ago
How many services with >$10B in revenue/yr have been closed by Google?
- woofie11 6y ago
  Well, the only ones it's had with >$10b revenue historically are advertising, and literally like two or three products. You can't generalize from a small n. But there are plenty of horror stories of being deplatformed by Google advertising too. Those make money. There's a limited time window during which Google Cloud can bleed money. If that runs out before it's profitable, businesses on it can say "bye bye," face bitrot, or see huge markups due to lock-in.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

FWIW, I have a lot of familiarity and usage with both AWS and GCP, and at present I am a very satisfied GCP customer, and I've seen marked improvement with how they manage their offerings over the past 2 years.

woofie11 6y ago
And I just got f-ed by the Google Cloud team this morning, albeit their Workspace division and not GCP. I have a GSuite legacy account for my personal domain name. Most of my family is on it. It was free. I just tried to set up Google Voice on one of the accounts. I learned that they silently disabled setting up new phone numbers in 2019. And on my main account, long distance calling stopped working about a month ago. No notice, no nothing. It's been gradually bit-rotting for years, but this is kinda a big deal. My kids can't get phone numbers associated with their main Google account because I set it up when Google was supporting personal domains? That's obnoxious. Support goes nowhere, naturally. Google says "Use workspace support." Workspace says "Upgrade to have support." And obviously, pricing is prohibitive given that this is now a B2B offering, and my whole family is on the domain. Cousins, aunties, and all. $6/user/month gets super-expensive super-fast. Stuff like this means Google loses millions of dollars of business elsewhere. I keep swiping my credit card for Amazon, as does my company.
- hg35h4 6y ago
  > I have a GSuite legacy account for my personal domain name. Most of my family is on it. It was free. Oh boy they've been really trying to push people off GSuite legacy hard. I started missing incoming emails, testing would show a server error about a high email flow for maybe a dozen per day. Zero support, and they erased my posts on their support board. You can't change the primary domain as free, you can't use any email diag tools, you can't do anything. I ended up moving to Zoho. Sure it's not free, but it's not outrageous for personal/family use. Decent migration tools as well. It really started a hard de-Googlification. I nix any chatter about using Google at work now as well.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  I certainly do fault Google for what they're doing (especially the "long distance calling stopped working about a month ago. No notice, no nothing." part). At the same time, free services is part of the problem, and I'm glad Google is shutting some of this stuff down. If anything, I think Google's biggest issue in the enterprise has been they just haven't had the corporate DNA to do enterprise-level support well for paying customers. IMO they've improved in that regard in the past couple years.