6 ms·

Makes me wonder.. if an internet shop can build a cloud platform, what does Google come up with? They must have sooo much experience, own tools, people, knowled

by buster 14y ago

Makes me wonder.. if an internet shop can build a cloud platform, what does Google come up with? They must have sooo much experience, own tools, people, knowledge in that area, it's hard to imagine how far this can go. Hopefully it will not be just a half-assed experiment again.

arkitaip 14y ago
Unfortunately they also have tons of bureaucracy and a serious lack of understanding and execution of great design, making it difficult for them to compete with startups and other, more flexible ventures.
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  Why "unfortunately"? I'm glad big incubents can't roll over all startups. :-)
omfg 14y ago
Amazon is quite a bit more than 'an internet shop'.
- buster 14y ago
  Nowadays. How would you describe Amazon before the rise of AWS? The fact that i didn't say Amazon and you recognized it says a lot, too :P
  - jrockway 14y ago
    They had a pretty neat fulfillment network before AWS. Amazon is pretty unique in that they make a lot of their internals available as products, but even before that, the infrastructure was still impressive. What other online store do you use? :)
    - buster 14y ago
      Yeah, but did they have their own server hardware, data centers, programming languages, CDNs, web frameworks, kernel developers, operating systems, invented new protocols and hosted all kinds of stuff on the internet for billions of users? ;) But of course, i probably use Amazon for 80% of my online shopping needs, they rock!
      - molmalo 14y ago
        Amusing. Your description fits very well for Google, Microsoft and Apple, if we leave server hardware aside, because I don't know exactly what hardware does Microsoft (or Apple) use in their own Datacenters. Does anybody know this?
        buster 14y ago
        Sure, and i would expect them to offer a lot as well :P MS seems to use Dell (only link i could find): http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/28/dell-our-servers-will-power-windows-azure/ http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/28/dell-...
        molmalo 14y ago
        Thanks for that. So it seem that they use a "highly-customized server platform". I hope they show eventually what those customizations are.
beagle3 14y ago
> if an internet shop can build a cloud platform, That's like saying that the Wii was produced by a card-game company, or that a wood pulp paper making company makes the Lumia 900. Companies evolve; Amazon were experienced in managing a lot of servers, and where looking for ways to make money on that expertise (and on the less than 100% used server capacity, although I remember hearing somewhere that within 3 months of introduction, AWS required more server capacity than Amazon-the-store had at the time)
- mburns 14y ago
  Specifically, Amazon was early to the party on cloud computing because Amazons usage trends vary so widely, their off-peak hours would leave them with thousands of idle servers. Google has plenty of horsepower to spare, sure, but their usage pattern is much more planned for and expected, so launching a cloud required carving out resources for it, while Amazon just had to make use of excess resources it couldn't find a better use for.
- buster 14y ago
  Not sure why you need to criticize it. All the companies just did a great job, innovated, evolved, succeeded, that's great :) I think you cannot deny that Amazon had "less to work with" when they started then Google has today. In terms of experience.
  - beagle3 14y ago
    > Not sure why you need to criticize it. I was criticizing your expression. Amazon had A9 search and other ventures before AWS - they were far from being "an internet shop" even back then. > I think you cannot deny that Amazon had "less to work with" when they started then Google has today. In terms of experience. Indeed, but there was also less expectation. There wasn't any real competition, so they could get away with a hell of a lot less than Google can get with today.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  Amazon's experience was a natural fit for PaaS systems. Amazon moved to a service oriented architecture years ago. And that meant that individual teams were responsible for the deployment of their services on hardware. That led to the creation of automation that made that sort of thing easy. Being able to add or remove servers from a deployment group, being able to press a button and push out a build to an entire cluster of machines simultaneously, that sort of thing. Amazon took their experience building those internal tools and built a similar set of systems and tools (AWS) that would be suitable for both internal use and for selling as a service to the public. And it's done well on both of those fronts, AWS has been successful and amazon internally has migrated a significant amount of their back-end services and website front-end hosting to AWS.
digeridoo 14y ago
Google sure is great at technology, but I think they're not nearly as great at doing business as Apple or Amazon are. Cloud computing is all about creating a good blend of technology and business. If you don't get the business off the ground, you won't have the stamina to seriously invest in the technology, particularly in terms of building lean, scalable operations. Building scalable systems is perhaps 1% inspiration (distributed algorithms), and 99% transpiration (cost-effective operations). If you don't get it right, you'll be looking at this big red number below the line and will have to kill it. The fact that Google is already huge does not matter that much, it's not being big that's hard, it's growing fast and staying afloat. Indeed, Amazon is an Internet shop. They'll sell anything to anyone, anywhere, and they do so for ridiculously low margins. That's a mighty competitor to be up against. Google on the other hand has never been very successful outside of advertising, and have only been a high margin business. Not saying that Google won't be successful in this space. If they're willing to lose money on it they could achieve a sizeable market share comparable to Microsoft's. They lack Microsoft's gigantic sales network, but make up for in developer goodwill. However, catching up with the lean operations machine of Amazon seems infeasible at this point. What they could do is focus on their core strengths and open up their massive data sets and tools for all to use. So far they have been very reluctant to do so however, afraid to harm their core business.
- dannyr 14y ago
  "Google on the other hand has never been very successful outside of advertising" Android is the most widely-used mobile OS in the world. Shouldn't that count as a success?
  - buster 14y ago
    True, but also a technology Google did not invent in-house but bought. Although i don't know how much of the original software developed at Android Inc. got into the first devices. That'd be interesting to know :)
  - digeridoo 14y ago
    Sure, Android is a hugely successful way of protecting their advertising business by controlling the mobile platform. However, the revenue from Android is tiny compared to their advertising revenue, and negligible compared to Apple's revenue for comparable products.
dneb7 14y ago
> Hopefully it will not be just a half-assed experiment again And that sentiment is _exactly_ why I won't trust my business to whatever they come up with. There's no knowing how seriously and committed they are. Sure, Amazon could do an about face, but they don't have that history, so I'm more comfortable trusting them.

by buster 14y ago

arkitaip 14y ago

Unfortunately they also have tons of bureaucracy and a serious lack of understanding and execution of great design, making it difficult for them to compete with startups and other, more flexible ventures.

vibrunazo 14y ago
Why "unfortunately"? I'm glad big incubents can't roll over all startups. :-)

omfg 14y ago

Amazon is quite a bit more than 'an internet shop'.

buster 14y ago
Nowadays. How would you describe Amazon before the rise of AWS? The fact that i didn't say Amazon and you recognized it says a lot, too :P
- jrockway 14y ago
  They had a pretty neat fulfillment network before AWS. Amazon is pretty unique in that they make a lot of their internals available as products, but even before that, the infrastructure was still impressive. What other online store do you use? :)
  - buster 14y ago
    Yeah, but did they have their own server hardware, data centers, programming languages, CDNs, web frameworks, kernel developers, operating systems, invented new protocols and hosted all kinds of stuff on the internet for billions of users? ;) But of course, i probably use Amazon for 80% of my online shopping needs, they rock!
    - molmalo 14y ago
      Amusing. Your description fits very well for Google, Microsoft and Apple, if we leave server hardware aside, because I don't know exactly what hardware does Microsoft (or Apple) use in their own Datacenters. Does anybody know this?
      - buster 14y ago
        Sure, and i would expect them to offer a lot as well :P MS seems to use Dell (only link i could find): http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/28/dell-our-servers-will-power-windows-azure/ http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/28/dell-...
        molmalo 14y ago
        Thanks for that. So it seem that they use a "highly-customized server platform". I hope they show eventually what those customizations are.

beagle3 14y ago

> if an internet shop can build a cloud platform, That's like saying that the Wii was produced by a card-game company, or that a wood pulp paper making company makes the Lumia 900. Companies evolve; Amazon were experienced in managing a lot of servers, and where looking for ways to make money on that expertise (and on the less than 100% used server capacity, although I remember hearing somewhere that within 3 months of introduction, AWS required more server capacity than Amazon-the-store had at the time)

mburns 14y ago
Specifically, Amazon was early to the party on cloud computing because Amazons usage trends vary so widely, their off-peak hours would leave them with thousands of idle servers. Google has plenty of horsepower to spare, sure, but their usage pattern is much more planned for and expected, so launching a cloud required carving out resources for it, while Amazon just had to make use of excess resources it couldn't find a better use for.
buster 14y ago
Not sure why you need to criticize it. All the companies just did a great job, innovated, evolved, succeeded, that's great :) I think you cannot deny that Amazon had "less to work with" when they started then Google has today. In terms of experience.
- beagle3 14y ago
  > Not sure why you need to criticize it. I was criticizing your expression. Amazon had A9 search and other ventures before AWS - they were far from being "an internet shop" even back then. > I think you cannot deny that Amazon had "less to work with" when they started then Google has today. In terms of experience. Indeed, but there was also less expectation. There wasn't any real competition, so they could get away with a hell of a lot less than Google can get with today.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
Amazon's experience was a natural fit for PaaS systems. Amazon moved to a service oriented architecture years ago. And that meant that individual teams were responsible for the deployment of their services on hardware. That led to the creation of automation that made that sort of thing easy. Being able to add or remove servers from a deployment group, being able to press a button and push out a build to an entire cluster of machines simultaneously, that sort of thing. Amazon took their experience building those internal tools and built a similar set of systems and tools (AWS) that would be suitable for both internal use and for selling as a service to the public. And it's done well on both of those fronts, AWS has been successful and amazon internally has migrated a significant amount of their back-end services and website front-end hosting to AWS.

digeridoo 14y ago

Google sure is great at technology, but I think they're not nearly as great at doing business as Apple or Amazon are. Cloud computing is all about creating a good blend of technology and business. If you don't get the business off the ground, you won't have the stamina to seriously invest in the technology, particularly in terms of building lean, scalable operations. Building scalable systems is perhaps 1% inspiration (distributed algorithms), and 99% transpiration (cost-effective operations). If you don't get it right, you'll be looking at this big red number below the line and will have to kill it. The fact that Google is already huge does not matter that much, it's not being big that's hard, it's growing fast and staying afloat. Indeed, Amazon is an Internet shop. They'll sell anything to anyone, anywhere, and they do so for ridiculously low margins. That's a mighty competitor to be up against. Google on the other hand has never been very successful outside of advertising, and have only been a high margin business. Not saying that Google won't be successful in this space. If they're willing to lose money on it they could achieve a sizeable market share comparable to Microsoft's. They lack Microsoft's gigantic sales network, but make up for in developer goodwill. However, catching up with the lean operations machine of Amazon seems infeasible at this point. What they could do is focus on their core strengths and open up their massive data sets and tools for all to use. So far they have been very reluctant to do so however, afraid to harm their core business.

dannyr 14y ago
"Google on the other hand has never been very successful outside of advertising" Android is the most widely-used mobile OS in the world. Shouldn't that count as a success?
- buster 14y ago
  True, but also a technology Google did not invent in-house but bought. Although i don't know how much of the original software developed at Android Inc. got into the first devices. That'd be interesting to know :)
- digeridoo 14y ago
  Sure, Android is a hugely successful way of protecting their advertising business by controlling the mobile platform. However, the revenue from Android is tiny compared to their advertising revenue, and negligible compared to Apple's revenue for comparable products.

dneb7 14y ago

> Hopefully it will not be just a half-assed experiment again And that sentiment is _exactly_ why I won't trust my business to whatever they come up with. There's no knowing how seriously and committed they are. Sure, Amazon could do an about face, but they don't have that history, so I'm more comfortable trusting them.