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Google keeps bragging about all their internal capabilities because they want to hire people. But so what? If I had a real reason to, I could fire up a couple t

by abtinf 15y ago

Google keeps bragging about all their internal capabilities because they want to hire people. But so what? If I had a real reason to, I could fire up a couple thousand machines on amazon and analyze data akimbo. In a sense, google is worse than microsoft - they really don't share any of their hardcore cs innovations. At least MS is in the business of selling technology. Google is in the business of hoarding it in order to derive competitive advantage in advertising. I just wrote up an entry about this at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2972368 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2972368

someone13 15y ago
I disagree with parts of this - Google does release some rather high-quality source code (LevelDB, Protocol Buffers, Chrome/V8), and also provides some well-done research papers. The entire concept of MapReduce wouldn't exist without Google. And that's inspired a whole host of products. In the same vein, I don't find it unusual that they're NOT sharing the code for MapReduce et al., in that it's proprietary technology. I don't expect Amazon to share the source code behind AWS, and I don't expect Google to share the source code for MapReduce.
- abtinf 15y ago
  Your points are totally valid. But my point of view is, which company is more relevant to me as a developer and as someone trying to build a startup? And it seems to me that I get a lot more love from Amazon, whether its some nifty new DNS feature or dropping incoming bandwidth charges to 0.
  - DasIch 15y ago
    That doesn't change the fact that unlike Amazon, Google is not in the business of selling tools to developers; with that in mind it is impressive what they do for developers despite that.
  - abraham 15y ago
    I don't see that as being a very good comparison. Amazon provides a great service but you have to pay Amazon to get access. Google provides a lot of open source code that you can take, modify, and run on any hardware.

by abtinf 15y ago

someone13 15y ago

I disagree with parts of this - Google does release some rather high-quality source code (LevelDB, Protocol Buffers, Chrome/V8), and also provides some well-done research papers. The entire concept of MapReduce wouldn't exist without Google. And that's inspired a whole host of products. In the same vein, I don't find it unusual that they're NOT sharing the code for MapReduce et al., in that it's proprietary technology. I don't expect Amazon to share the source code behind AWS, and I don't expect Google to share the source code for MapReduce.

abtinf 15y ago
Your points are totally valid. But my point of view is, which company is more relevant to me as a developer and as someone trying to build a startup? And it seems to me that I get a lot more love from Amazon, whether its some nifty new DNS feature or dropping incoming bandwidth charges to 0.
- DasIch 15y ago
  That doesn't change the fact that unlike Amazon, Google is not in the business of selling tools to developers; with that in mind it is impressive what they do for developers despite that.
- abraham 15y ago
  I don't see that as being a very good comparison. Amazon provides a great service but you have to pay Amazon to get access. Google provides a lot of open source code that you can take, modify, and run on any hardware.