4 ms·

Perhaps you don't notice GCP outages because so few companies rely on them?

fragmede 5mo ago
GCP has a lot of customers. But you wouldn't know the companies that do, unless you worked there and wanted to leak it, or it publicly comes out. Eg it's been publicly acknowledged that Apple uses GCP for iCloud, https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/02/26/apple-confirms-it-uses-google-cloud-for-icloud.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/02/26/apple-confirms-it-uses-g... , and Home Depot is another that's used as a case study, https://cloud.google.com/customers/the-home-depot https://cloud.google.com/customers/the-home-depot but most customers don't want to make a big deal about being on GCP as it's none of our business who's hosting them.
- shye 5mo ago
  Apple also uses AWS, and I won't be surprised if they also use Azure. Big companies are multicloud, and not because it's a good idea (it rarely is), but because they inherited multiple environments on different CSPs, and maintaining those where they are is often cheaper than migrating them to a different CSP.
  - Alive-in-2025 5mo ago
    I wonder if big companies can get a special contract with something like you can't delete my service automatically (unless it's an emergency)
    - jedberg 5mo ago
      If you're big enough you don't need a contract for that, that's just their default method of operation.
      - GoblinSlayer 5mo ago
        #48203226
- Imustaskforhelp 5mo ago
  upvoted & favourited because you taught me a really interesting fact which I feel makes up for an amazing discussion (regarding icloud using GCP). also, I can't help but imagine if instead of render, it was Apple's account which could've been auto-banned (Render is almost a billion dollar company or series-B, I am not sure) I haven't read the articles and I admit that but can you please elaborate to me on why Apple uses GCP themselves for idrive, I would love to know the technical decisions behind it on a genuinely curious level. From my (let's face it) limited understanding of GCP, it isn't particularly good or price performant and one of the wonders is that Google sells it directly with Google photos too and an competitive lineup at android. So in some sense if Apple is using gcp's for icloud then aren't they just reselling google storage themselves and google can always beat them in pricing while also wanting to chew away at the percentage of iphones themselves too? I mean, I can still try to understand the google search pays apple 10 billion dollars (right?) deal but I don't quite understand why apple would pick GCP when the hosting market is one of the more competitive ones with lots of companies. I would love to get some explainations or theories as to why exactly is that the case (Also given its HN, if anyone from apple is reading or knows the answer, I would love that too!)
  - morpheuskafka 5mo ago
    > So in some sense if Apple is using gcp's for icloud then aren't they just reselling google storage themselves and google can always beat them in pricing while also wanting to chew away at the percentage of iphones themselves too? Apple uses Samsung displays and Sony camera sensors, iirc, both of which are flagship Android phone makers. That doesn't really seem to be a concern in their procurement thinking. iCloud and Google Photos are not that direct competitors because which one is native depends on which phone you already bought. Google Photos definitely does have some market share on iOS due to having 3x the free storage and a handy compression mode (which used to be entirely unmetered at launch but now still uses storage, just less of it). But it will never be a full competitor because it is a separate app you have to install and it can't magically fetch cloud-only photos from the camera roll and photo picker UI like iCloud can. The pricing of Google One and Apple One/iCloud+ isn't really dictated by underlying storage costs. At the higher tiers like 2TB, many don't come close to using all, while the laughable 5GB iCloud free tier clearly costs almost nothing in raw store, even on nVME SSD, if you compare it to S3/Backblaze or even raw disk pricing on the cloud.
VirusNewbie 5mo ago
Spotify, Ebay, Paypal, Apple, Walmart, Uber are huge users. Lots of other big named companies are big users that I don't think are public. Then there's Anthropic...huge user.
- buildbot 5mo ago
  Snap, for like 15 years at this point: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/snap-maintains-uptime-with-mcs-from-google-cloud/ https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/snap-maintains-up...
locknitpicker 5mo ago
> Perhaps you don't notice GCP outages because so few companies rely on them? GCP is the world's third largest cloud provider, and has around half of AWS' market share. Claiming no one uses it reads like Yogi Berra's "no one goes there anymore, it's too crowded".
- SahAssar 5mo ago
  Isn't that including things like google workspace and similar? Both Azure and GCP have sometimes included things that most people think of as unrelated SaaS (office 365, gsuite/workspace) to make themselves look bigger in the cloud sector.
  - locknitpicker 5mo ago
    > Isn't that including things like google workspace and similar? AWS also includes Amazon WorkSpaces. Moreover, AWS includes all of Amazon's cloud infrastructure for things like Amazon music, Ring, Amazon Prime Video, etc.
    - SahAssar 5mo ago
      But as a percentage of revenue I'd assume those are a lot smaller than Office365 is for microsoft and Workspace is for google. Last I checked I don't think AWS included things like Amazon Prime Video either, AWS is primarily their buissness/platform offerings, not consumer things like Twitch/Prime/Music/etc.
koito17 5mo ago
There is a mobile game I know of that had an outage as a result of a GCP service outage. That is the only time I've noticed GCP outages. With that said, I would not say few companies rely on GCP. Search for "GCP" in this month's HN hiring thread. There are 23 hits, more than Azure's 21. AWS has 90 hits, which I guess shows its sheer dominance in the startup space. But these figures more or less agree with my intuition of the major clouds being AWS/GCP/Azure.
somewhatgoated 5mo ago
We rely on them so I would have definitely noticed. Even a couple of minutes and our customers would freak out…

GCP has a lot of customers. But you wouldn't know the companies that do, unless you worked there and wanted to leak it, or it publicly comes out. Eg it's been publicly acknowledged that Apple uses GCP for iCloud, https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/02/26/apple-confirms-it-uses-google-cloud-for-icloud.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/02/26/apple-confirms-it-uses-g... , and Home Depot is another that's used as a case study, https://cloud.google.com/customers/the-home-depot https://cloud.google.com/customers/the-home-depot but most customers don't want to make a big deal about being on GCP as it's none of our business who's hosting them.

shye 5mo ago
Apple also uses AWS, and I won't be surprised if they also use Azure. Big companies are multicloud, and not because it's a good idea (it rarely is), but because they inherited multiple environments on different CSPs, and maintaining those where they are is often cheaper than migrating them to a different CSP.
- Alive-in-2025 5mo ago
  I wonder if big companies can get a special contract with something like you can't delete my service automatically (unless it's an emergency)
  - jedberg 5mo ago
    If you're big enough you don't need a contract for that, that's just their default method of operation.
    - GoblinSlayer 5mo ago
      #48203226
Imustaskforhelp 5mo ago
upvoted & favourited because you taught me a really interesting fact which I feel makes up for an amazing discussion (regarding icloud using GCP). also, I can't help but imagine if instead of render, it was Apple's account which could've been auto-banned (Render is almost a billion dollar company or series-B, I am not sure) I haven't read the articles and I admit that but can you please elaborate to me on why Apple uses GCP themselves for idrive, I would love to know the technical decisions behind it on a genuinely curious level. From my (let's face it) limited understanding of GCP, it isn't particularly good or price performant and one of the wonders is that Google sells it directly with Google photos too and an competitive lineup at android. So in some sense if Apple is using gcp's for icloud then aren't they just reselling google storage themselves and google can always beat them in pricing while also wanting to chew away at the percentage of iphones themselves too? I mean, I can still try to understand the google search pays apple 10 billion dollars (right?) deal but I don't quite understand why apple would pick GCP when the hosting market is one of the more competitive ones with lots of companies. I would love to get some explainations or theories as to why exactly is that the case (Also given its HN, if anyone from apple is reading or knows the answer, I would love that too!)
- morpheuskafka 5mo ago
  > So in some sense if Apple is using gcp's for icloud then aren't they just reselling google storage themselves and google can always beat them in pricing while also wanting to chew away at the percentage of iphones themselves too? Apple uses Samsung displays and Sony camera sensors, iirc, both of which are flagship Android phone makers. That doesn't really seem to be a concern in their procurement thinking. iCloud and Google Photos are not that direct competitors because which one is native depends on which phone you already bought. Google Photos definitely does have some market share on iOS due to having 3x the free storage and a handy compression mode (which used to be entirely unmetered at launch but now still uses storage, just less of it). But it will never be a full competitor because it is a separate app you have to install and it can't magically fetch cloud-only photos from the camera roll and photo picker UI like iCloud can. The pricing of Google One and Apple One/iCloud+ isn't really dictated by underlying storage costs. At the higher tiers like 2TB, many don't come close to using all, while the laughable 5GB iCloud free tier clearly costs almost nothing in raw store, even on nVME SSD, if you compare it to S3/Backblaze or even raw disk pricing on the cloud.

VirusNewbie 5mo ago

Spotify, Ebay, Paypal, Apple, Walmart, Uber are huge users. Lots of other big named companies are big users that I don't think are public. Then there's Anthropic...huge user.

buildbot 5mo ago
Snap, for like 15 years at this point: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/snap-maintains-uptime-with-mcs-from-google-cloud/ https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/snap-maintains-up...

locknitpicker 5mo ago

> Perhaps you don't notice GCP outages because so few companies rely on them? GCP is the world's third largest cloud provider, and has around half of AWS' market share. Claiming no one uses it reads like Yogi Berra's "no one goes there anymore, it's too crowded".

SahAssar 5mo ago
Isn't that including things like google workspace and similar? Both Azure and GCP have sometimes included things that most people think of as unrelated SaaS (office 365, gsuite/workspace) to make themselves look bigger in the cloud sector.
- locknitpicker 5mo ago
  > Isn't that including things like google workspace and similar? AWS also includes Amazon WorkSpaces. Moreover, AWS includes all of Amazon's cloud infrastructure for things like Amazon music, Ring, Amazon Prime Video, etc.
  - SahAssar 5mo ago
    But as a percentage of revenue I'd assume those are a lot smaller than Office365 is for microsoft and Workspace is for google. Last I checked I don't think AWS included things like Amazon Prime Video either, AWS is primarily their buissness/platform offerings, not consumer things like Twitch/Prime/Music/etc.

koito17 5mo ago

There is a mobile game I know of that had an outage as a result of a GCP service outage. That is the only time I've noticed GCP outages. With that said, I would not say few companies rely on GCP. Search for "GCP" in this month's HN hiring thread. There are 23 hits, more than Azure's 21. AWS has 90 hits, which I guess shows its sheer dominance in the startup space. But these figures more or less agree with my intuition of the major clouds being AWS/GCP/Azure.

somewhatgoated 5mo ago

We rely on them so I would have definitely noticed. Even a couple of minutes and our customers would freak out…