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> Because half the crap Google ships are “side projects which didn’t work out,” a list which apparently now includes its cloud. What do you mean by this? It se

> Because half the crap Google ships are “side projects which didn’t work out,” a list which apparently now includes its cloud. What do you mean by this? It seems GCP has around 10pc market share and growing.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
Google Cloud “is under pressure from top management to pass Amazon or Microsoft—currently first and second, respectively, in cloud market share—or risk losing funding” [1]. [1] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-brass-set-2023-as-deadline-to-beat-amazon-microsoft-in-cloud https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-brass-set-202...
- Yajirobe 4y ago
  Paywall
- tweenagedream 4y ago
  I work at Google so am perhaps biased, but that article is from 2019 and cloud is now a 20B/yr business and growing. Why does it keep coming up?
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    There’s a bias here for AWS because they were the early adopter product and have traction with startups. I think Google is more creative on the business side with GCP and is doing well in the market in a lot of ways. AWS does the circa 1985 “Hi, we’re IBM, fuck you” thing. Azure doesn’t get the grief GCP does because MS service growth is driven by really complicated deals. Few of the types of people who post here understand it.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > Azure doesn’t get the grief GCP does because MS service growth is driven by really complicated deals The kind crafted by competent sales teams in it for the long haul. Not the rotating cast of characters at Google.
      - Spooky23 4y ago
        Lol. Those account managers these days get purged pretty quickly. MS isn’t Oracle, but it isn’t 2003 either. “It would be a shame if those O365 E5 went up 30%. How about you buy 50% of your spend on these credits that fell off the truck, and we can forget about that?”
  - mehdix 4y ago
    IIRC, because Google is the only major cloud provider that made such statement.
    - jabradoodle 4y ago
      They didn't though? The source is a single article claiming to have spoken to insiders, which was subsequently denied and never confirmed.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - randomtask 4y ago
    Presumably because the article linked above says that the rumoured deadline for gaining sufficient market share is this year? Also, yes revenues have been growing, but is GCP profitable after all this time? As you point out, it's been 4 years since that article was published.
  - p_l 4y ago
    Because Google no longer knows how to do customer/developer engagement just as it goes into things that require it more? It doesn't help that it allows others to push opinion pieces in media that build up memes against its products (I honestly believe it's non-trivial part of what killed Google+ - at some point someone believed at Google about it being "ghost town" and started making it more FB-like and pushing "new people to observe" at you, making it less and less usable). The infamous "will kill your account on basis of unaccountable algorithm and you can't do anything about it" is another big issue when trying to get clients on GCP. I honestly find GCP to be the best cloud I can use when not going full hog on things like AWS-specific services, yet there's always the fear that Google will just kill the account, possibly shuttering the business.
    - okeuro49 4y ago
      > there's always the fear that Google will just kill the account, possibly shuttering the business. I get that feeling sometimes about my Gmail account. If I do get deleted by the algorithm, then I feel the only way I will get support is by posting it on hackernews.
  - influx 4y ago
    Is it profitable? Anyone can sell cloud services for 1$ and lose money on every dollar. Keep doing that long enough, and still be behind AWS by 4x, and you’ll get your plug pulled.
jacquesm 4y ago
Right up to the point where Google top management decides to pull the plug. Their messaging on this has been most unfortunate, if there is one thing that you can't do as a cloud services provider it is to threaten to pull the plug on the whole division if the numbers don't get into some arbitrary range for their definition of success. That pretty much guarantees that you won't make it that far.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

Google Cloud “is under pressure from top management to pass Amazon or Microsoft—currently first and second, respectively, in cloud market share—or risk losing funding” [1]. [1] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-brass-set-2023-as-deadline-to-beat-amazon-microsoft-in-cloud https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-brass-set-202...

Yajirobe 4y ago
Paywall
tweenagedream 4y ago
I work at Google so am perhaps biased, but that article is from 2019 and cloud is now a 20B/yr business and growing. Why does it keep coming up?
- Spooky23 4y ago
  There’s a bias here for AWS because they were the early adopter product and have traction with startups. I think Google is more creative on the business side with GCP and is doing well in the market in a lot of ways. AWS does the circa 1985 “Hi, we’re IBM, fuck you” thing. Azure doesn’t get the grief GCP does because MS service growth is driven by really complicated deals. Few of the types of people who post here understand it.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > Azure doesn’t get the grief GCP does because MS service growth is driven by really complicated deals The kind crafted by competent sales teams in it for the long haul. Not the rotating cast of characters at Google.
    - Spooky23 4y ago
      Lol. Those account managers these days get purged pretty quickly. MS isn’t Oracle, but it isn’t 2003 either. “It would be a shame if those O365 E5 went up 30%. How about you buy 50% of your spend on these credits that fell off the truck, and we can forget about that?”
- mehdix 4y ago
  IIRC, because Google is the only major cloud provider that made such statement.
  - jabradoodle 4y ago
    They didn't though? The source is a single article claiming to have spoken to insiders, which was subsequently denied and never confirmed.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- randomtask 4y ago
  Presumably because the article linked above says that the rumoured deadline for gaining sufficient market share is this year? Also, yes revenues have been growing, but is GCP profitable after all this time? As you point out, it's been 4 years since that article was published.
- p_l 4y ago
  Because Google no longer knows how to do customer/developer engagement just as it goes into things that require it more? It doesn't help that it allows others to push opinion pieces in media that build up memes against its products (I honestly believe it's non-trivial part of what killed Google+ - at some point someone believed at Google about it being "ghost town" and started making it more FB-like and pushing "new people to observe" at you, making it less and less usable). The infamous "will kill your account on basis of unaccountable algorithm and you can't do anything about it" is another big issue when trying to get clients on GCP. I honestly find GCP to be the best cloud I can use when not going full hog on things like AWS-specific services, yet there's always the fear that Google will just kill the account, possibly shuttering the business.
  - okeuro49 4y ago
    > there's always the fear that Google will just kill the account, possibly shuttering the business. I get that feeling sometimes about my Gmail account. If I do get deleted by the algorithm, then I feel the only way I will get support is by posting it on hackernews.
- influx 4y ago
  Is it profitable? Anyone can sell cloud services for 1$ and lose money on every dollar. Keep doing that long enough, and still be behind AWS by 4x, and you’ll get your plug pulled.

jacquesm 4y ago

Right up to the point where Google top management decides to pull the plug. Their messaging on this has been most unfortunate, if there is one thing that you can't do as a cloud services provider it is to threaten to pull the plug on the whole division if the numbers don't get into some arbitrary range for their definition of success. That pretty much guarantees that you won't make it that far.