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Never a good idea to rely on Google proprietary tech (unless you are Google)... it could be sunset at any time without warning. I use GCP but I try my best to s

by umvi 3y ago

Never a good idea to rely on Google proprietary tech (unless you are Google)... it could be sunset at any time without warning. I use GCP but I try my best to stay Google agnostic (avoid GCP-only offerings, etc) so that I can move to AWS if Google pulls the rug out from under me.

rockostrich 3y ago
GCP products have a much better track record than Google consumer products when it comes to support since there are usually enterprise customers with multi-year contracts worth tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars using them.
- callalex 3y ago
  That’s what AppEngine customers thought.
  - weitendorf 3y ago
    I worked on AppEngine (well, Serverless Compute) at Google for over 4 years and left on Friday. Did something happen to AppEngine in the last week?
    - callalex 3y ago
      I’m talking about the pricing disaster that happened in 2017/2018 where user prices went up from 10x-100x because Google wanted to kill the product without actually killing it.
  - tempnow987 3y ago
    Didn't they also hammer folks using google maps in a business / cloud context? I was also an old app engine user, but bailed ages ago (original app engine).
- jerrygenser 3y ago
  IoT is one example of a big backbone service that was sunset.
  - endisneigh 3y ago
    It had barely any usage though from what I can tell from searching about it. Not that it’s any solace to those affected.
- marcinzm 3y ago
  AI Platform is a recent example that’s been deprecated.
  - rockostrich 3y ago
    Wasn't it just superseded by Vertex AI? According to the banner announcement in the docs: > All the functionality of legacy AI Platform and new features are available on the Vertex AI platform.
weitendorf 3y ago
I'm biased having worked on GCP, but I think GCP actually has a very good track record of not sunsetting entire products or removing core functionality. When I worked on AppEngine, I would often see apps written 10+ years ago still chugging along. It is true though that GCP sometimes sunsets specific product functionality, requiring changes on the customers' part. Some of these are unavoidable (eg committing to apply security patches to Python 2.7 given that the rest of the world is mostly not upstreaming these patches anymore), but not all of them. I would certainly use Cloud Spanner externally now that I've left the company, and IMO spanner has such a compelling featureset that it's a strong reason to use GCP for greenfield development. The problem though is that it's only available on GCP, and could become expensive at large scale.
- jerrygenser 3y ago
  >It is true though that GCP sometimes sunsets specific product functionality, requiring changes on the customers' part. Some of these are unavoidable (eg committing to apply security patches to Python 2.7 given that the rest of the world is mostly not upstreaming these patches anymore), but not all of them. A good example is probably IoT. I've heard first hand anecdotes of very difficult migrations off this service.
- nojvek 3y ago
  My previous employer was a GCP customer. Google did pull occasional shenanigans totally breaking us with random upgrades without notifying us. Their support wouldn’t acknowledge it was their fault until we were mad at them. My newer employer is AWS. Their offerings are a lot more stable and support is helpful. If you want to build a serious business I would avoid GCP. Google doesn’t really give a shit at winning Cloud. Ads is their core business.
  - weitendorf 3y ago
    Ugh I'm so sorry, you should definitely have been notified in advance about breaking changes, unless they were accidental bugs and regressions. That was something we took pretty seriously for the products I worked on. I have definitely enjoyed using AWS support. But I've also encountered some broken/janky functionality (eg using custom domain + api gateway + websockets + Lambda for the apparently niche-task of having a real website use the Lambda-websockets integration) on AWS that I don't think would have made it to production at Google. I also really dislike how they handle project-level logging compared to how it's done on GCP. Ultimately I do think some GCP products like Bigquery, Cloud Run (I'm biased here), and Spanner as well as general DevEx/reliability factors are compelling enough for GCP to be worth serious consideration, even if AWS offers better support.

by umvi 3y ago

rockostrich 3y ago

GCP products have a much better track record than Google consumer products when it comes to support since there are usually enterprise customers with multi-year contracts worth tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars using them.

callalex 3y ago
That’s what AppEngine customers thought.
- weitendorf 3y ago
  I worked on AppEngine (well, Serverless Compute) at Google for over 4 years and left on Friday. Did something happen to AppEngine in the last week?
  - callalex 3y ago
    I’m talking about the pricing disaster that happened in 2017/2018 where user prices went up from 10x-100x because Google wanted to kill the product without actually killing it.
- tempnow987 3y ago
  Didn't they also hammer folks using google maps in a business / cloud context? I was also an old app engine user, but bailed ages ago (original app engine).
jerrygenser 3y ago
IoT is one example of a big backbone service that was sunset.
- endisneigh 3y ago
  It had barely any usage though from what I can tell from searching about it. Not that it’s any solace to those affected.
marcinzm 3y ago
AI Platform is a recent example that’s been deprecated.
- rockostrich 3y ago
  Wasn't it just superseded by Vertex AI? According to the banner announcement in the docs: > All the functionality of legacy AI Platform and new features are available on the Vertex AI platform.

weitendorf 3y ago

I'm biased having worked on GCP, but I think GCP actually has a very good track record of not sunsetting entire products or removing core functionality. When I worked on AppEngine, I would often see apps written 10+ years ago still chugging along. It is true though that GCP sometimes sunsets specific product functionality, requiring changes on the customers' part. Some of these are unavoidable (eg committing to apply security patches to Python 2.7 given that the rest of the world is mostly not upstreaming these patches anymore), but not all of them. I would certainly use Cloud Spanner externally now that I've left the company, and IMO spanner has such a compelling featureset that it's a strong reason to use GCP for greenfield development. The problem though is that it's only available on GCP, and could become expensive at large scale.

jerrygenser 3y ago
>It is true though that GCP sometimes sunsets specific product functionality, requiring changes on the customers' part. Some of these are unavoidable (eg committing to apply security patches to Python 2.7 given that the rest of the world is mostly not upstreaming these patches anymore), but not all of them. A good example is probably IoT. I've heard first hand anecdotes of very difficult migrations off this service.
nojvek 3y ago
My previous employer was a GCP customer. Google did pull occasional shenanigans totally breaking us with random upgrades without notifying us. Their support wouldn’t acknowledge it was their fault until we were mad at them. My newer employer is AWS. Their offerings are a lot more stable and support is helpful. If you want to build a serious business I would avoid GCP. Google doesn’t really give a shit at winning Cloud. Ads is their core business.
- weitendorf 3y ago
  Ugh I'm so sorry, you should definitely have been notified in advance about breaking changes, unless they were accidental bugs and regressions. That was something we took pretty seriously for the products I worked on. I have definitely enjoyed using AWS support. But I've also encountered some broken/janky functionality (eg using custom domain + api gateway + websockets + Lambda for the apparently niche-task of having a real website use the Lambda-websockets integration) on AWS that I don't think would have made it to production at Google. I also really dislike how they handle project-level logging compared to how it's done on GCP. Ultimately I do think some GCP products like Bigquery, Cloud Run (I'm biased here), and Spanner as well as general DevEx/reliability factors are compelling enough for GCP to be worth serious consideration, even if AWS offers better support.