6 ms·

As a Googler, it's often easier for me to setup a GCP consumer account, AWS, or Heroku account to demo something, compared to using anything internal. I remembe

As a Googler, it's often easier for me to setup a GCP consumer account, AWS, or Heroku account to demo something, compared to using anything internal. I remember the most annoying situation was like 10 years ago when me and other engineers ported Quake 2 to run in Chrome, we were in a time crunch to demo it multiplayer, and I ended up setting up an AWS account to serve it. But then I left it running and forgot and ended up getting a few hundred dollars billed to me because the Quake2 server was chewing CPU.

bamboozled 5y ago
I could imagine you're violating some pretty strict policies doing this? You're taking proprietary code and running it on a competitors platform? I like to think I'm pretty open minded about stuff like this, and I've actually done something similar, but I'd be surprised if you didn't get your ass handed to you for that type of thing?
- mabbo 5y ago
  Why? Do you think there's a risk of Amazon stealing code from a customer? No matter what code they took, the cost would never be worth it for them.
  - bamboozled 5y ago
    If I took my companies code and hosted it anywhere execept where I was authorized to do so, I'd expect flack for it. I'm less worried about Amazing stealing it, but it seems like a silly place to put it nevertheless.
    - cromwellian 5y ago
      Just to reiterate, that’s not what happened, no proprietary code was exposed externally, as the OP is based off of Java clone of the Quake2 code both of which were released as open source. I don’t know what the policy of Google is with respect to hosting stuff that’s proprietary or sensitive on AWS but I imagine it requires approval just for lawyercat reasons, especially if any PII is collected given all of the regulations these days.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  This is what separates companies that get things done from companies that pay a lot of people to hopefully maybe get things done. A server for a multiplayer Quake port... Who is Google paying to hand their ass to them over that? Who has both the authority to hand their ass to them, and a lack of discretion to not let it end at "well in general we don't do that, but I see why you did it and there's little to no risk" - At some companies yes, someone is paid to go "I caught someone putting our proprietary code up on a competitors platform!!!!" and no one will actually think critically about what exactly was proprietary, so someone putting up a quake demo might as well have put up the Coke secret formula And now OP who actually generated some value at little to no risk gets their ass handed to them and someone who simply lacked the skills to realize the risk profile gets a notch on their "I add value and earn my paycheck" badge.
- potatoman22 5y ago
  Can't let the Quake 2 source code escape Google
- cromwellian 5y ago
  No, no proprietary code was used, the port was done from the Open source Java clone Jake2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake2 We ported it by using Google Web Toolkit Java->JS compiler, and replaced OpenGL with WebGL, and all of the other bits with Web APIs (websocket, pointer-events, fullscreen-api, filesystem api, etc) The assets (proprietary artwork, levels, etc) were not hosted on AWS, it simply downloaded the EXE file from ID servers and extracted it in the browser.
  - bamboozled 5y ago
    You said this: > As a Googler, it's often easier for me to setup a GCP consumer account, AWS, or Heroku account to demo something, compared to using anything internal. I get you're trying to make a point of saying you can do something easier elsewhere, but then why even through in the "as a Googler bit" without clarifying that you're not really working on anything of consequence where you'd be actually asked to host things internally. You're basically hosting open source projects on AWS.
    - breakfastduck 5y ago
      Looks like someone is desperate to get into an argument
      - bamboozled 5y ago
        I couldn’t care less really, I would if someone was just running my code wherever they felt like it though.
    - cromwellian 5y ago
      Why does it matter whether I'm working on something for production, or working on a 20% project? The point is, it shouldn't have been so hard for me to setup and run a simple server cost (billed using my divisions cost center), and then have to pay out of my own pocket to use a competitors product (and go through the hassle of expensing it). That's a bit of a sad pill for someone working at a company that had one of the most advanced data centers in the world. There are lots of times when developing a product internally that we need to host internal prototypes for demos, and GCP/AWS is a lot easier to use than the internal tooling. Even today, using our internal GCP instance vs the external one is more difficult. A bigger reason AWS was chosen was because AppEngine, IIRC, back in those days could not support WebSockets (among other things), as Google's frontend Load Balancers that the predecessor to GCP used didn't know how to deal with it. The Chrome team was pushing heavily on new Web APIs like WebSockets, but by the time they were ready to ship to market, our own cloud infrastructure didn't support it yet. I'd go further and say that, using internal infra to host employee 20% projects that are not really for production, is the kind of dogfooding that would have generated the pain points necessary to make a product like AWS, because those hobby workloads are far more similar to the workloads the average GCP customers deploy. Because we didn't really prioritize that, we kind of missed the boat on Cloud and was a late entrant, even though most of the foundational technology (eg Containers) we already had a long time ago.
- cromwellian 5y ago
  For those interested: The original project https://code.google.com/archive/p/quake2-gwt-port/ https://code.google.com/archive/p/quake2-gwt-port/ GitHub (Stefan Haustein is my genius teammate who did all of the heavy lifting on the OpenGL -> WebGL piece) https://github.com/stefanhaustein/quake2-playn-port https://github.com/stefanhaustein/quake2-playn-port You can still play it here, on AppEngine http://quake2playn.appspot.com/ http://quake2playn.appspot.com/
- mgfist 5y ago
  > You're taking proprietary code and running it on a competitors platform? Do you not realize how dumb this sounds? Companies run critical code/infrastructure on AWS to the tune of many billions of dollars a year.
  - bamboozled 5y ago
    They do, but you generally also need to do so following some best practices and guidelines.If everyone in every company just put stuff on whatever provider they liked, then there would be a lot of issues. I mean, do you have any idea how many people have exposed confidential data by hosting it on a publicly accessible s3 bucket?
  - stvvvv 5y ago
    Google Proprietary code on AWS: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/introducing-bigquery-omni https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/introd... https://cloud.google.com/anthos/clusters/docs/aws/concepts/architecture https://cloud.google.com/anthos/clusters/docs/aws/concepts/a... etc.

bamboozled 5y ago

I could imagine you're violating some pretty strict policies doing this? You're taking proprietary code and running it on a competitors platform? I like to think I'm pretty open minded about stuff like this, and I've actually done something similar, but I'd be surprised if you didn't get your ass handed to you for that type of thing?

mabbo 5y ago
Why? Do you think there's a risk of Amazon stealing code from a customer? No matter what code they took, the cost would never be worth it for them.
- bamboozled 5y ago
  If I took my companies code and hosted it anywhere execept where I was authorized to do so, I'd expect flack for it. I'm less worried about Amazing stealing it, but it seems like a silly place to put it nevertheless.
  - cromwellian 5y ago
    Just to reiterate, that’s not what happened, no proprietary code was exposed externally, as the OP is based off of Java clone of the Quake2 code both of which were released as open source. I don’t know what the policy of Google is with respect to hosting stuff that’s proprietary or sensitive on AWS but I imagine it requires approval just for lawyercat reasons, especially if any PII is collected given all of the regulations these days.
BoorishBears 5y ago
This is what separates companies that get things done from companies that pay a lot of people to hopefully maybe get things done. A server for a multiplayer Quake port... Who is Google paying to hand their ass to them over that? Who has both the authority to hand their ass to them, and a lack of discretion to not let it end at "well in general we don't do that, but I see why you did it and there's little to no risk" - At some companies yes, someone is paid to go "I caught someone putting our proprietary code up on a competitors platform!!!!" and no one will actually think critically about what exactly was proprietary, so someone putting up a quake demo might as well have put up the Coke secret formula And now OP who actually generated some value at little to no risk gets their ass handed to them and someone who simply lacked the skills to realize the risk profile gets a notch on their "I add value and earn my paycheck" badge.
potatoman22 5y ago
Can't let the Quake 2 source code escape Google
cromwellian 5y ago
No, no proprietary code was used, the port was done from the Open source Java clone Jake2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake2 We ported it by using Google Web Toolkit Java->JS compiler, and replaced OpenGL with WebGL, and all of the other bits with Web APIs (websocket, pointer-events, fullscreen-api, filesystem api, etc) The assets (proprietary artwork, levels, etc) were not hosted on AWS, it simply downloaded the EXE file from ID servers and extracted it in the browser.
- bamboozled 5y ago
  You said this: > As a Googler, it's often easier for me to setup a GCP consumer account, AWS, or Heroku account to demo something, compared to using anything internal. I get you're trying to make a point of saying you can do something easier elsewhere, but then why even through in the "as a Googler bit" without clarifying that you're not really working on anything of consequence where you'd be actually asked to host things internally. You're basically hosting open source projects on AWS.
  - breakfastduck 5y ago
    Looks like someone is desperate to get into an argument
    - bamboozled 5y ago
      I couldn’t care less really, I would if someone was just running my code wherever they felt like it though.
  - cromwellian 5y ago
    Why does it matter whether I'm working on something for production, or working on a 20% project? The point is, it shouldn't have been so hard for me to setup and run a simple server cost (billed using my divisions cost center), and then have to pay out of my own pocket to use a competitors product (and go through the hassle of expensing it). That's a bit of a sad pill for someone working at a company that had one of the most advanced data centers in the world. There are lots of times when developing a product internally that we need to host internal prototypes for demos, and GCP/AWS is a lot easier to use than the internal tooling. Even today, using our internal GCP instance vs the external one is more difficult. A bigger reason AWS was chosen was because AppEngine, IIRC, back in those days could not support WebSockets (among other things), as Google's frontend Load Balancers that the predecessor to GCP used didn't know how to deal with it. The Chrome team was pushing heavily on new Web APIs like WebSockets, but by the time they were ready to ship to market, our own cloud infrastructure didn't support it yet. I'd go further and say that, using internal infra to host employee 20% projects that are not really for production, is the kind of dogfooding that would have generated the pain points necessary to make a product like AWS, because those hobby workloads are far more similar to the workloads the average GCP customers deploy. Because we didn't really prioritize that, we kind of missed the boat on Cloud and was a late entrant, even though most of the foundational technology (eg Containers) we already had a long time ago.
cromwellian 5y ago
For those interested: The original project https://code.google.com/archive/p/quake2-gwt-port/ https://code.google.com/archive/p/quake2-gwt-port/ GitHub (Stefan Haustein is my genius teammate who did all of the heavy lifting on the OpenGL -> WebGL piece) https://github.com/stefanhaustein/quake2-playn-port https://github.com/stefanhaustein/quake2-playn-port You can still play it here, on AppEngine http://quake2playn.appspot.com/ http://quake2playn.appspot.com/
mgfist 5y ago
> You're taking proprietary code and running it on a competitors platform? Do you not realize how dumb this sounds? Companies run critical code/infrastructure on AWS to the tune of many billions of dollars a year.
- bamboozled 5y ago
  They do, but you generally also need to do so following some best practices and guidelines.If everyone in every company just put stuff on whatever provider they liked, then there would be a lot of issues. I mean, do you have any idea how many people have exposed confidential data by hosting it on a publicly accessible s3 bucket?
- stvvvv 5y ago
  Google Proprietary code on AWS: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/introducing-bigquery-omni https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/introd... https://cloud.google.com/anthos/clusters/docs/aws/concepts/architecture https://cloud.google.com/anthos/clusters/docs/aws/concepts/a... etc.