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This is a good reminder that what we call the public cloud today is actually a misnomer - it’s not actually a public cloud, it’s someone else’s cloud. Just like

This is a good reminder that what we call the public cloud today is actually a misnomer - it’s not actually a public cloud, it’s someone else’s cloud. Just like we used to say the cloud is really just someone else’s computer. I think people started calling it the public cloud simply because of the scale and seemingly easy access to everyone, where the current clouds are seemingly in open competition with each other.

throwaway11460 2y ago
The public waterpool is also someone else's pool but it's still public.
- jedberg 2y ago
  Kind of different. The public pool is paid for by taxes and is publicly owned. The public cloud is still privately owned.
  - throwaway11460 2y ago
    My point is that the pool very often is just a private company. All three public pools around me here in central Europe are privately held companies.
deleted 2y ago
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toast0 2y ago
Public has many meanings. Everyone can buy or access it is a valid meaning and doesn't say anything about ownership.
curt15 2y ago
>Just like we used to say the cloud is really just someone else’s computer. I still describe cloud computing as renting someone else's computers.
eddythompson80 2y ago
Not really sure what you mean by misnomer or what an “actual public cloud” would mean. It’s called public cloud to distinguish it from private clouds which plenty of large organizations have. The big cloud providers license their clouds for such deployments. Unless you mean that a “public cloud” should mean something like non-corporate governance? With things like kubernetes, it’s easier than ever to deploy your own private clouds these days. I think the only misnomer is the word “cloud” itself. We had the term “hosting providers/companies” which is exactly what these public cloud are. It’s just that the term “hosting provider/company” had about 15 years of precedence that almost always meant “small scale hosting”, so they just came up with a new marketing terms
- sixdimensional 2y ago
  I mean it in the sense of a "public utility" [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_utility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_utility
  - eddythompson80 2y ago
    Public has lots of meanings. Here it just means not private.

throwaway11460 2y ago

The public waterpool is also someone else's pool but it's still public.

jedberg 2y ago
Kind of different. The public pool is paid for by taxes and is publicly owned. The public cloud is still privately owned.
- throwaway11460 2y ago
  My point is that the pool very often is just a private company. All three public pools around me here in central Europe are privately held companies.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

toast0 2y ago

Public has many meanings. Everyone can buy or access it is a valid meaning and doesn't say anything about ownership.

curt15 2y ago

>Just like we used to say the cloud is really just someone else’s computer. I still describe cloud computing as renting someone else's computers.

eddythompson80 2y ago

Not really sure what you mean by misnomer or what an “actual public cloud” would mean. It’s called public cloud to distinguish it from private clouds which plenty of large organizations have. The big cloud providers license their clouds for such deployments. Unless you mean that a “public cloud” should mean something like non-corporate governance? With things like kubernetes, it’s easier than ever to deploy your own private clouds these days. I think the only misnomer is the word “cloud” itself. We had the term “hosting providers/companies” which is exactly what these public cloud are. It’s just that the term “hosting provider/company” had about 15 years of precedence that almost always meant “small scale hosting”, so they just came up with a new marketing terms

sixdimensional 2y ago
I mean it in the sense of a "public utility" [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_utility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_utility
- eddythompson80 2y ago
  Public has lots of meanings. Here it just means not private.