5 ms·

Google also has a history of massively spiking the cost of its services. Vendor lockin is a dangerous thing.

xnx 3y ago
This definitely happened with Google Maps, where Google was clearly the dominant player. Has it happened to other services? It seems far less likely to happen for business cloud services where they are a distance 2nd (3rd?) to AWS. I know of some examples (admittedly ancient) where they have reduced costs: https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2015/05/Pay-Less-Compute-Moore.html https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2015/05/Pay-Less-Comput...
- callalex 3y ago
  Before they offered Google cloud, they offered Google App Engine. After they introduced Google Cloud they got bored of App Engine and 10x’d the price. This was particularly painful because App Engine was a batteries-included solution with heavy vendor lock-in.
  - xnx 3y ago
    Good history lesson. I didn't realize that Google Cloud wasn't a rename/expansion of Google App Engine.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      But, Google Cloud was a rename/expansion (specifically, expansion) of Google App Engine (GAE a pre-existing Google products that was then part of Google Cloud when the latter brand was launched.)
  - derefr 3y ago
    > After they introduced Google Cloud they got bored of App Engine and 10x’d the price. I don't know about "got bored of"; I'd say more "effectively deprecated, using increasing costs† as an implicit push toward rewriting your service for more modern parts of their platform." Specifically, Google want you to rewrite your GAE apps for Cloud Run (https://cloud.google.com/appengine/migration-center/run/compare-gae-with-run https://cloud.google.com/appengine/migration-center/run/comp...): > Cloud Run is the latest evolution of Google Cloud Serverless, building on the experience of running App Engine for more than a decade. Cloud Run runs on much of the same infrastructure as App Engine standard environment, so there are many similarities between these two platforms. > Cloud Run is designed to improve upon the App Engine experience, incorporating many of the best features of both App Engine standard environment and App Engine flexible environment. Cloud Run services can handle the same workloads as App Engine services, but Cloud Run offers customers much more flexibility in implementing these services. This flexibility, along with improved integrations with both Google Cloud and third-party services, also enables Cloud Run to handle workloads that cannot run on App Engine. Anyone who's still on GAE (rather than having moved over to Cloud Run) at this point is a "legacy enterprise customer"; and so Google have at this point moved GAE pricing beyond just a monetary disincentive to use, to being "fired-customer pricing" — i.e. the price you charge when you don't really want to work with a customer any more, a price that says "go away", but if they still want to pay you even at that price-point, then sure, why not?
- acdha 3y ago
  The last year has had multiple GCP cost increases: https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing-announce https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing-announce https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/updates-to-google-clouds-infrastructure-pricing https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/update... https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/introducing-new-bigquery-pricing-editions https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/introd... https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing-announce https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing-announce https://cloud.google.com/vpc/pricing-announce https://cloud.google.com/vpc/pricing-announce
- logicchains 3y ago
  >Has it happened to other services? BigQuery initially was a lot more powerful, then they started adding a bunch of resource limits on queries that you could only overcome by paying up. Not a direct fee increase, rather you paid the same fee for a worse product.
Tehnix 3y ago
Curious: have they ever increased prices of existing Google Cloud services? As far as I know, AWS only ever decreases prices on services for example
- jefftk 3y ago
  AWS has increased prices, most recently when they started charging for static IPs (even ones attached to a running instance).
  - tpmx 3y ago
    That one caused a week of work for me... (redesigning something slated to go live in a few months)
- tpmx 3y ago
  GCP has seen price increases: https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/14/inflation-is-real-google-cloud-raises-its-storage-prices/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/14/inflation-is-real-google-c... Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30671997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30671997
- rlpb 3y ago
  "Coders howl over Google's App Engine price hike (natch)" https://www.theregister.com/2011/09/02/google_app_engine_users_on_pricing_change/ https://www.theregister.com/2011/09/02/google_app_engine_use... I don't know if Google App Engine falls under Google Cloud services, but either way that's just a technicality; the sentiment remains the same. Edit: more information here: https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/The-Unofficial-Google-App-Engine-Price-Change-FAQ https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/The-Unofficial-Goog...
  - packetslave 3y ago
    TWELVE YEARS AGO! find a new complaint.
    - 3y ago
Freedom2 3y ago
Is there any evidence of vendor lock-in actually being a widespread issue?
holografix 3y ago
Source?

xnx 3y ago

This definitely happened with Google Maps, where Google was clearly the dominant player. Has it happened to other services? It seems far less likely to happen for business cloud services where they are a distance 2nd (3rd?) to AWS. I know of some examples (admittedly ancient) where they have reduced costs: https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2015/05/Pay-Less-Compute-Moore.html https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2015/05/Pay-Less-Comput...

callalex 3y ago
Before they offered Google cloud, they offered Google App Engine. After they introduced Google Cloud they got bored of App Engine and 10x’d the price. This was particularly painful because App Engine was a batteries-included solution with heavy vendor lock-in.
- xnx 3y ago
  Good history lesson. I didn't realize that Google Cloud wasn't a rename/expansion of Google App Engine.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    But, Google Cloud was a rename/expansion (specifically, expansion) of Google App Engine (GAE a pre-existing Google products that was then part of Google Cloud when the latter brand was launched.)
- derefr 3y ago
  > After they introduced Google Cloud they got bored of App Engine and 10x’d the price. I don't know about "got bored of"; I'd say more "effectively deprecated, using increasing costs† as an implicit push toward rewriting your service for more modern parts of their platform." Specifically, Google want you to rewrite your GAE apps for Cloud Run (https://cloud.google.com/appengine/migration-center/run/compare-gae-with-run https://cloud.google.com/appengine/migration-center/run/comp...): > Cloud Run is the latest evolution of Google Cloud Serverless, building on the experience of running App Engine for more than a decade. Cloud Run runs on much of the same infrastructure as App Engine standard environment, so there are many similarities between these two platforms. > Cloud Run is designed to improve upon the App Engine experience, incorporating many of the best features of both App Engine standard environment and App Engine flexible environment. Cloud Run services can handle the same workloads as App Engine services, but Cloud Run offers customers much more flexibility in implementing these services. This flexibility, along with improved integrations with both Google Cloud and third-party services, also enables Cloud Run to handle workloads that cannot run on App Engine. Anyone who's still on GAE (rather than having moved over to Cloud Run) at this point is a "legacy enterprise customer"; and so Google have at this point moved GAE pricing beyond just a monetary disincentive to use, to being "fired-customer pricing" — i.e. the price you charge when you don't really want to work with a customer any more, a price that says "go away", but if they still want to pay you even at that price-point, then sure, why not?
acdha 3y ago
The last year has had multiple GCP cost increases: https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing-announce https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing-announce https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/updates-to-google-clouds-infrastructure-pricing https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/update... https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/introducing-new-bigquery-pricing-editions https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/introd... https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing-announce https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing-announce https://cloud.google.com/vpc/pricing-announce https://cloud.google.com/vpc/pricing-announce
logicchains 3y ago
>Has it happened to other services? BigQuery initially was a lot more powerful, then they started adding a bunch of resource limits on queries that you could only overcome by paying up. Not a direct fee increase, rather you paid the same fee for a worse product.

Tehnix 3y ago

Curious: have they ever increased prices of existing Google Cloud services? As far as I know, AWS only ever decreases prices on services for example

jefftk 3y ago
AWS has increased prices, most recently when they started charging for static IPs (even ones attached to a running instance).
- tpmx 3y ago
  That one caused a week of work for me... (redesigning something slated to go live in a few months)
tpmx 3y ago
GCP has seen price increases: https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/14/inflation-is-real-google-cloud-raises-its-storage-prices/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/14/inflation-is-real-google-c... Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30671997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30671997
rlpb 3y ago
"Coders howl over Google's App Engine price hike (natch)" https://www.theregister.com/2011/09/02/google_app_engine_users_on_pricing_change/ https://www.theregister.com/2011/09/02/google_app_engine_use... I don't know if Google App Engine falls under Google Cloud services, but either way that's just a technicality; the sentiment remains the same. Edit: more information here: https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/The-Unofficial-Google-App-Engine-Price-Change-FAQ https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/The-Unofficial-Goog...
- packetslave 3y ago
  TWELVE YEARS AGO! find a new complaint.
  - 3y ago

Freedom2 3y ago

Is there any evidence of vendor lock-in actually being a widespread issue?

holografix 3y ago

Source?