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Google's business model is to have no customer service and have customers discard-able without notice when Google chooses. Why would a business want to do busin

Google's business model is to have no customer service and have customers discard-able without notice when Google chooses. Why would a business want to do business to business with Google and actually pay them at this point? They do 'free' sort of well but they are a terrible option for dependable partner whether you pay them or not.

janosett 6y ago
I was involved in a mid-sized software company migrating from AWS to GCP. My experience was that the GCP team was very hands on, and that enterprise support was very responsive. The support isn't perfect, nor is the product -- but I would say the level of customer service for GCP can't be compared to other Google products.
- bilal4hmed 6y ago
  maybe they are confused between Google & GCP
- llbeansandrice 6y ago
  Why did the company choose to migrate from AWS to GCP? Just curious.
  - cbushko 6y ago
    Not the original poster but we migrated to GCP because: 1) AWS was extremely expensive 2) Our GCP bill is about 1/3 of what AWS was 3) The Kubernetes offering is top notch 4) Google giving us credits and offering us consulting were the triggers that started us talking.
    - llbeansandrice 6y ago
      Seems like k8s is a big seller for a lot of companies. We don't use it currently on our team and the larger company is whole-sale in on AWS I'm not sure they'd ever be able to make the switch. Always like to see why people make these big changes though, thanks!
      - cbushko 6y ago
        I spent over a year doing a full migration from AWS EC2 + ECS instances to GCP + docker + kubernetes. It was a huge task that has paid off very well. 1) Costs per customer are lower because you can fit more containers per VM due to kubernetes doing the scheduling for you. Customers also include developer environments. 2) The number of deploys is way up because there is a simple and established pattern that everyone follows. 3) The speed of creating new services has increased because of the established patterns with containers, kubernetes resources, and deploys. Thinks days vs weeks to get something running. 4) The number of Ops issues are lower because kubernetes handles so many things for you. For example, if a deploy is incorrect for some reason, the old service is sitting there running. No outage = no escalation = everyone sleeps at night. Even if I was a tiny startup, I would still recommend using Kubernetes. The patterns, tooling and insight that Kubernetes gives you will save you TIME. The time saved is worth more than the tiny cost of a 3 node Kubernetes cluster. That is time you can use to develop your product and sell it vs time spent ftp'ing binaries to your Digital Ocean instance. :)
        jrockway 6y ago
        I know you're only picking on Digital Ocean incidentally here, but their managed Kubernetes offering is Pretty Okay. I use it for my personal stuff and it's pretty much everything I expect from a managed Kubernetes offering. Just don't use EKS. That is managed Kubernetes in the checkbox marketing sense only.
        cbushko 6y ago
        Definitely. I have nothing against Digital Ocean or their offering. It was only an example of a different mindset.
    - CodesInChaos 6y ago
      What makes GCP's Kubernetes offering better than the competition?
      - cbushko 6y ago
        There are several reasons: - Google has a lot of experience running containerized services because of Borg. Google Research says that they have been running these workloads since 2005. - The above gives them insight into how to do this well. They would have the internal infrastructure, logging and monitoring already setup. - They are the creator and still a major contributor to Kubernetes itself which means they can insert their influence on it. To be fair, my only experience running Kubernetes is on GCP so maybe they are all this easy to use and run. The internet tells me that other offerings are not as good. Compared to running workloads on EC2 instances and ECS, using GKE is amazing and pain free. Note: I am responsible for 5 clusters, 300+ nodes total and several thousand running services. Not huge by any means.
        amzn-throw 6y ago
        The Borg thing is pure marketing. Amazon also has been running internally on containers for years before ECS. But workloads for massive FAANG companies designed by FAANG engineers turn out to be quite different than most AWS/GCP customers. Just like EC2 wasn't Amazon selling its "spare capacity during off-peak" but always a purpose built service with completely isolated data centers and network fabric from day 1, the connection between Borg and Kubernetes is tenuous at best. Honestly, I would encourage you to evaluate ECS and Fargate. Forget Kubernetes and direct instance management. Try a construct like https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/api/latest/docs/@aws-cdk_aws-ecs-patterns.ApplicationLoadBalancedFargateService.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/api/latest/docs/@aws-cdk_aws... and see how much simpler it is than all the K8S overhead. Source: I'm at Amazon but I work on none of these services and opinions are my own. I played with K8S and am eternally confused how it's as popular as it is. I guess it gives you the illusion of not having lock in?
        CodesInChaos 6y ago
sz4kerto 6y ago
Anecdotally we had great experience with GCP support.
- vincentmarle 6y ago
  GCP Support is not free though.
  - colde 6y ago
    Neither is AWS Support. But they do have much lower priced offers though.
avery42 6y ago
From GCP docs [0]: Effect of ToS violations Google-wide disabled account In some cases a Google-wide account (which covers access to a variety of Google products like Google Photos, Google Play, Google Drive, and GCP) will be disabled for violations of a Google ToS, egregious policy violations, or as required by law. Owners of disabled Google accounts will not be able to access their Google Cloud resources until the account is reinstated. If an account is disabled, a notification is sent to the secondary email address provided during the signup process, if available. If a phone number is available, the user is notified via text message. The notification includes a link for appeal and recovery, where applicable. In order to regain access to their GCP resources, owners of disabled Google accounts will need to contact Google support and have their account re-enabled. To minimize the effect of an account being disabled on Google Cloud resources, we recommend that you add more than one owner to all resources. As long as there is at least one active owner, GCP resources will not be suspended due to the one of the owners being disabled. Given the Google account horror stories that pop up every few months, seems risky if you're solo/only have one GCP owner. [0]: https://cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/project-suspension-guidelines https://cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/project-suspe...
- firloop 6y ago
  Google will suspend entire accounts even if you have more than one owner. A few years back, our business credit card was somehow stolen and used to buy Google Adwords. We disputed the charge with our bank. A day or two later, at 4am local time, our GCP account was suspended for fraud (presumably because the same, stolen, card was attached to that account). All instances were stopped and our service was brought to a halt. We couldn’t contact Google Cloud support because our account was suspended. We had to go through our network to get our account re-instated. Pretty awful way to start our morning, to say the least.
  - notyourday 6y ago
    That's why one should not use GCP for anything
    - 6y ago
konne88 6y ago
Wouldn't Google have a very long history of business to business from their advertising platform?
ForHackernews 6y ago
Some of the GCP stuff works really well, whereas the AWS equivalent feels like a janky afterthought. Looking at you, EKS.
make3 6y ago
I think this sorts of makes sense for free services like Search, Gmail and Youtube, where each "client" (user) only gives them a tiny amount of revenue. This makes very little sense for Cloud Computing where each one your clients gives you large amounts of cash. Maybe they are too used to the first scenario.
fnord77 6y ago
google's propensity for abruptly cancelling products seems like a substantial business risk, too. GCP revenue has been declining, so... edit: revenue GROWTH is declining
- jsnell 6y ago
  That is not even remotely true. In the latest earnings, Google Cloud revenue grew by 46% year on year, and they said GCP specifically grew faster than Cloud as a whole.
  - fnord77 6y ago
    sorry, meant to say revenue GROWTH has been declining. https://venturebeat.com/2020/07/31/probeat-slowing-aws-microsoft-azure-and-google-cloud-revenue-growth-is-a-good-thing/ https://venturebeat.com/2020/07/31/probeat-slowing-aws-micro...

janosett 6y ago

I was involved in a mid-sized software company migrating from AWS to GCP. My experience was that the GCP team was very hands on, and that enterprise support was very responsive. The support isn't perfect, nor is the product -- but I would say the level of customer service for GCP can't be compared to other Google products.

bilal4hmed 6y ago
maybe they are confused between Google & GCP
llbeansandrice 6y ago
Why did the company choose to migrate from AWS to GCP? Just curious.
- cbushko 6y ago
  Not the original poster but we migrated to GCP because: 1) AWS was extremely expensive 2) Our GCP bill is about 1/3 of what AWS was 3) The Kubernetes offering is top notch 4) Google giving us credits and offering us consulting were the triggers that started us talking.
  - llbeansandrice 6y ago
    Seems like k8s is a big seller for a lot of companies. We don't use it currently on our team and the larger company is whole-sale in on AWS I'm not sure they'd ever be able to make the switch. Always like to see why people make these big changes though, thanks!
    - cbushko 6y ago
      I spent over a year doing a full migration from AWS EC2 + ECS instances to GCP + docker + kubernetes. It was a huge task that has paid off very well. 1) Costs per customer are lower because you can fit more containers per VM due to kubernetes doing the scheduling for you. Customers also include developer environments. 2) The number of deploys is way up because there is a simple and established pattern that everyone follows. 3) The speed of creating new services has increased because of the established patterns with containers, kubernetes resources, and deploys. Thinks days vs weeks to get something running. 4) The number of Ops issues are lower because kubernetes handles so many things for you. For example, if a deploy is incorrect for some reason, the old service is sitting there running. No outage = no escalation = everyone sleeps at night. Even if I was a tiny startup, I would still recommend using Kubernetes. The patterns, tooling and insight that Kubernetes gives you will save you TIME. The time saved is worth more than the tiny cost of a 3 node Kubernetes cluster. That is time you can use to develop your product and sell it vs time spent ftp'ing binaries to your Digital Ocean instance. :)
      - jrockway 6y ago
        I know you're only picking on Digital Ocean incidentally here, but their managed Kubernetes offering is Pretty Okay. I use it for my personal stuff and it's pretty much everything I expect from a managed Kubernetes offering. Just don't use EKS. That is managed Kubernetes in the checkbox marketing sense only.
        cbushko 6y ago
        Definitely. I have nothing against Digital Ocean or their offering. It was only an example of a different mindset.
  - CodesInChaos 6y ago
    What makes GCP's Kubernetes offering better than the competition?
    - cbushko 6y ago
      There are several reasons: - Google has a lot of experience running containerized services because of Borg. Google Research says that they have been running these workloads since 2005. - The above gives them insight into how to do this well. They would have the internal infrastructure, logging and monitoring already setup. - They are the creator and still a major contributor to Kubernetes itself which means they can insert their influence on it. To be fair, my only experience running Kubernetes is on GCP so maybe they are all this easy to use and run. The internet tells me that other offerings are not as good. Compared to running workloads on EC2 instances and ECS, using GKE is amazing and pain free. Note: I am responsible for 5 clusters, 300+ nodes total and several thousand running services. Not huge by any means.
      - amzn-throw 6y ago
        The Borg thing is pure marketing. Amazon also has been running internally on containers for years before ECS. But workloads for massive FAANG companies designed by FAANG engineers turn out to be quite different than most AWS/GCP customers. Just like EC2 wasn't Amazon selling its "spare capacity during off-peak" but always a purpose built service with completely isolated data centers and network fabric from day 1, the connection between Borg and Kubernetes is tenuous at best. Honestly, I would encourage you to evaluate ECS and Fargate. Forget Kubernetes and direct instance management. Try a construct like https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/api/latest/docs/@aws-cdk_aws-ecs-patterns.ApplicationLoadBalancedFargateService.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/api/latest/docs/@aws-cdk_aws... and see how much simpler it is than all the K8S overhead. Source: I'm at Amazon but I work on none of these services and opinions are my own. I played with K8S and am eternally confused how it's as popular as it is. I guess it gives you the illusion of not having lock in?
        CodesInChaos 6y ago

sz4kerto 6y ago

Anecdotally we had great experience with GCP support.

vincentmarle 6y ago
GCP Support is not free though.
- colde 6y ago
  Neither is AWS Support. But they do have much lower priced offers though.

avery42 6y ago

From GCP docs [0]: Effect of ToS violations Google-wide disabled account In some cases a Google-wide account (which covers access to a variety of Google products like Google Photos, Google Play, Google Drive, and GCP) will be disabled for violations of a Google ToS, egregious policy violations, or as required by law. Owners of disabled Google accounts will not be able to access their Google Cloud resources until the account is reinstated. If an account is disabled, a notification is sent to the secondary email address provided during the signup process, if available. If a phone number is available, the user is notified via text message. The notification includes a link for appeal and recovery, where applicable. In order to regain access to their GCP resources, owners of disabled Google accounts will need to contact Google support and have their account re-enabled. To minimize the effect of an account being disabled on Google Cloud resources, we recommend that you add more than one owner to all resources. As long as there is at least one active owner, GCP resources will not be suspended due to the one of the owners being disabled. Given the Google account horror stories that pop up every few months, seems risky if you're solo/only have one GCP owner. [0]: https://cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/project-suspension-guidelines https://cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/project-suspe...

firloop 6y ago
Google will suspend entire accounts even if you have more than one owner. A few years back, our business credit card was somehow stolen and used to buy Google Adwords. We disputed the charge with our bank. A day or two later, at 4am local time, our GCP account was suspended for fraud (presumably because the same, stolen, card was attached to that account). All instances were stopped and our service was brought to a halt. We couldn’t contact Google Cloud support because our account was suspended. We had to go through our network to get our account re-instated. Pretty awful way to start our morning, to say the least.
- notyourday 6y ago
  That's why one should not use GCP for anything
  - 6y ago

konne88 6y ago

Wouldn't Google have a very long history of business to business from their advertising platform?

ForHackernews 6y ago

Some of the GCP stuff works really well, whereas the AWS equivalent feels like a janky afterthought. Looking at you, EKS.

make3 6y ago

I think this sorts of makes sense for free services like Search, Gmail and Youtube, where each "client" (user) only gives them a tiny amount of revenue. This makes very little sense for Cloud Computing where each one your clients gives you large amounts of cash. Maybe they are too used to the first scenario.

fnord77 6y ago

google's propensity for abruptly cancelling products seems like a substantial business risk, too. GCP revenue has been declining, so... edit: revenue GROWTH is declining

jsnell 6y ago
That is not even remotely true. In the latest earnings, Google Cloud revenue grew by 46% year on year, and they said GCP specifically grew faster than Cloud as a whole.
- fnord77 6y ago
  sorry, meant to say revenue GROWTH has been declining. https://venturebeat.com/2020/07/31/probeat-slowing-aws-microsoft-azure-and-google-cloud-revenue-growth-is-a-good-thing/ https://venturebeat.com/2020/07/31/probeat-slowing-aws-micro...