3 ms·

I know that a significant set of people here are saying that this is "end of Google". Actually, this is "beginning of Google". Google must focus on things they

by tlogan 13y ago

I know that a significant set of people here are saying that this is "end of Google". Actually, this is "beginning of Google". Google must focus on things they are best at: advertisement. The problem with their approach of having many half finished products that they were actually helping competition: they were discovering and validating market which is then captured by smaller companies. And my prediction is that the following Google products will probably die out soon: * Google App Engine - competition is improving at rapid pace and it is hard to keep up without focus. * Google Blogger - they will probably just make something similar under Google+ * Google Groups Probably there is more... but these are the one I see.

marban 13y ago
App Engine — are you serious? New releases every few weeks, quite a few innovations technology-wise and essentially no freeriders. Also, I don't see a lot of competition in terms of equivalent solutions; if at all.
- tlogan 13y ago
  I can be wrong about App Engine. Here is my reasoning... I think App Engine does not fit nicely into Google's grand vision: which is mobile, social, and search for advertising purposes. So they need to be become profitable soon or they will be shut down. However they lack enterprise customers and without enterprise and corporate customers it very hard to make things profitable.
  - tonfa 13y ago
    Are there any public information about whether appengine is profitable? Since the pricing change I'd expect most of their customers to be corporate.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    AppEngine and, really, all the "Cloud Platform" services from Google are a way to directly monetize the infrastructure that also supports Google's own applications. As such, if they are pricing them above the marginal hardware and support costs they are profitable, since the fixed costs are costs Google bears whether or not it offers them as an external service.
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    This is wrong. AE is profitable. They have invested so much into AE. Every year at I/O since AE was launched, Google has been presenting the progress in AE. Many of the top companies today are using either AE or EC2 (or both). It is impossible for them to drop AE. They might consider moving away at some point, but in the next 5-10 years it is impossible. But the longer the service remains running, the harder it is for both Google and customers to move away. Eventually, if someone crazy, more competitive comes along, and when customers fall behind they will begin a deprecation and that deprecation period will be years long. When that does happen, Google is no longer attractive. Google will not profit anymore.

by tlogan 13y ago

marban 13y ago

App Engine — are you serious? New releases every few weeks, quite a few innovations technology-wise and essentially no freeriders. Also, I don't see a lot of competition in terms of equivalent solutions; if at all.

tlogan 13y ago
I can be wrong about App Engine. Here is my reasoning... I think App Engine does not fit nicely into Google's grand vision: which is mobile, social, and search for advertising purposes. So they need to be become profitable soon or they will be shut down. However they lack enterprise customers and without enterprise and corporate customers it very hard to make things profitable.
- tonfa 13y ago
  Are there any public information about whether appengine is profitable? Since the pricing change I'd expect most of their customers to be corporate.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  AppEngine and, really, all the "Cloud Platform" services from Google are a way to directly monetize the infrastructure that also supports Google's own applications. As such, if they are pricing them above the marginal hardware and support costs they are profitable, since the fixed costs are costs Google bears whether or not it offers them as an external service.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  This is wrong. AE is profitable. They have invested so much into AE. Every year at I/O since AE was launched, Google has been presenting the progress in AE. Many of the top companies today are using either AE or EC2 (or both). It is impossible for them to drop AE. They might consider moving away at some point, but in the next 5-10 years it is impossible. But the longer the service remains running, the harder it is for both Google and customers to move away. Eventually, if someone crazy, more competitive comes along, and when customers fall behind they will begin a deprecation and that deprecation period will be years long. When that does happen, Google is no longer attractive. Google will not profit anymore.