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Noone on this planet can compete with Google on storage prices. I dont want to know how many petabytes of space they have laying around "just in case" another p

by spdy 14y ago

Noone on this planet can compete with Google on storage prices. I dont want to know how many petabytes of space they have laying around "just in case" another planet comes around and they have to index/mirror all the information.

mlinsey 14y ago
Extraterrestrial planets aside, it's a fair point. Google's fleet undoubtedly has more machines than Amazon's in total, and that might give Google better economies of scale even though it isn't the leader in the utility computing space. However, there are several other considerations. We don't know if the main google.com fleet is made up of the same types of machines as the ones used for Google Compute Engine; for example Google can much more easily tolerate a high failure rate for a single machine than a startup renting a couple of instances. There are also more costs to consider than just the hardware, customer support being a big example. Overall, I'd say that Google can certainly undercut Amazon on price, but at the cost of reducing the margins that its executives and shareholders are used to seeing. They might see this as a worthwhile tradeoff if they see utility computing as a strategically important space; but personally I don't see that space as a long-term threat to Google in the same way social networks or mobile phones were. But I'm certainly happy to see Google compete here; I benefit as much as any other startup from a price war.
- jaytaylor 14y ago
  > .. Google's fleet undoubtedly has more machines than Amazon's in total .. Given that this assertion is mandatory for your argument to hold water, actual numbers to support your claims are required here. And since Google and Amazon don't publicly share this data, where does that leave us?
  - spade 14y ago
    From 2009 to 2011, Google spent ~$8B on capital expenditures (buildings, property,& equipment) while Amazon spent ~$3B on capital expenditures. Given Google's scale, they probably have better economics than Amazon.
  - mlinsey 14y ago
    Technically, this argument is mandatory for an argument against me to hold water (that I was simply trying to say was a fair point against my original claim, even though many people were unfairly downvoting spdy for it). Feel free to discard the post if you'd like, which would leave us with the argument in my original post. I'm pretty confident in what I wrote, though.

by spdy 14y ago

mlinsey 14y ago

Extraterrestrial planets aside, it's a fair point. Google's fleet undoubtedly has more machines than Amazon's in total, and that might give Google better economies of scale even though it isn't the leader in the utility computing space. However, there are several other considerations. We don't know if the main google.com fleet is made up of the same types of machines as the ones used for Google Compute Engine; for example Google can much more easily tolerate a high failure rate for a single machine than a startup renting a couple of instances. There are also more costs to consider than just the hardware, customer support being a big example. Overall, I'd say that Google can certainly undercut Amazon on price, but at the cost of reducing the margins that its executives and shareholders are used to seeing. They might see this as a worthwhile tradeoff if they see utility computing as a strategically important space; but personally I don't see that space as a long-term threat to Google in the same way social networks or mobile phones were. But I'm certainly happy to see Google compete here; I benefit as much as any other startup from a price war.

jaytaylor 14y ago
> .. Google's fleet undoubtedly has more machines than Amazon's in total .. Given that this assertion is mandatory for your argument to hold water, actual numbers to support your claims are required here. And since Google and Amazon don't publicly share this data, where does that leave us?
- spade 14y ago
  From 2009 to 2011, Google spent ~$8B on capital expenditures (buildings, property,& equipment) while Amazon spent ~$3B on capital expenditures. Given Google's scale, they probably have better economics than Amazon.
- mlinsey 14y ago
  Technically, this argument is mandatory for an argument against me to hold water (that I was simply trying to say was a fair point against my original claim, even though many people were unfairly downvoting spdy for it). Feel free to discard the post if you'd like, which would leave us with the argument in my original post. I'm pretty confident in what I wrote, though.