I wonder if Snapchat is still using AppEngine. I'm pretty sure they were 50%+ of the AE traffic at some point.
I know googlers used to needle the AE SREs by calling them "Snapchat SREs"
Snap Inc. S-1
151–160 of 337 posts
Re: Snap Inc. S-1
#152Very interesting to see what they think of their competition: > We face significant competition in almost every aspect of our business both domestically and internationally. This includes larger, more established companies such as Apple, Facebook (including Instagram and WhatsApp), Google (including YouTube), Twitter, Kakao, LINE, Naver (including Snow), and Tencent, which provide their users with a variety of produc…
At least they're honest! Maybe it's the sector I'm in, but I rarely see this kind of candor in my sub-field of technology...
Re: Snap Inc. S-1
#153Snap Inc. is a camera company.
See Spectacles (and whatever else they have in store)
Re: Snap Inc. S-1
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
This, and related topics, always makes me laugh a bit. Mostly because people and companies will defend either move, with terms such as "focusing on the core business" or, opposite that statement, as "vertical integration". From my mostly uninformed POV, a company can do whatever they want with respect to this and be on good ground, making it an arbitrary decision with little basis in actual objectivity.
Things scale differently in different markets and products... It might be trivial to spin up extra cloud capacity within Google's system and benefit from all the robustness and redundancy they've already designed out. Meanwhile, Amazon is building their own UPS competitor because their infrastructure needs in the real world are specialized enough to be able to benefit. Each case is different and the details drive the…
I think Amazon is building their own UPS because UPS hasn't scaled for them.
Re: Snap Inc. S-1
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it not possible to build your own "alternative in the market" for $2 billion?
Why take the chance when you're about to have a lot of IPO cash? Go with Google for a few years until you (hopefully) become FB. Right now they'll focus on features, signing advertisers and users.
Absolutely.
I imagine they had a very strong bargaining position willing to commit this much, for this long. Even if Snapchat wasn't a valuable brand for Google to brag about, this amounts to ~10% of the yearly earnings [1] of Google's cloud business (SaaS and IaaS, of which I suspect SaaS like Apps for Work is the lion's share)
I'm sure they're getting a good deal, and can focus on features and getting their platform profitable, as you said.
1. "..at that pace, Google’s cloud could generate $4.1 billion in revenue in 2016" http://www.networkworld.com/article/3029164/cloud-computing/...
Re: Snap Inc. S-1
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are hardly limited by that. There were over 1 billion active iOS devices globally according Apple Q1 2016 report [1]. Android has even more. [1] http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/26/10828134/apple-earnings-re...
Just a few ideas: on iOS, the app requires at least iOS8. I dare bet more than half of those active devices won't be running at least iOS8. Second, you also won't convert 50% of those iOS users to use one app. Just not going to happen. Do you honestly see Snapchat growing to 300 or 500 million DAU?
The iPhone 4 is the newest iPhone to not get iOS 8. That's going all the way back to a phone released in 2010, nearly 7 years ago. There are definitely a few out there but I'm not sure it'd be more than half running In fact, according to a marketing company, as of March last year, only 37% of globally active iPhones were even as old as a 5S [1]. Even the iPhone 4S, which did get iOS 8, was on just 5%.
Even if that data is skewed towards newer phones due to the type of sites they market on, it's unlikely that anywhere near half of active devices are running a software version over three years old.
Also, the App Store offers you the last compatible version of the app if your device isn't up to date, and it's possible that that version of Snapchat is still capable of showing ads, although I don't have one around to test it.
[1] http://www.adweek.com/digital/data-37-of-global-iphone-users...
Re: Snap Inc. S-1
#157Very interesting to see what they think of their competition: > We face significant competition in almost every aspect of our business both domestically and internationally. This includes larger, more established companies such as Apple, Facebook (including Instagram and WhatsApp), Google (including YouTube), Twitter, Kakao, LINE, Naver (including Snow), and Tencent, which provide their users with a variety of produc…
At least they're honest! Maybe it's the sector I'm in, but I rarely see this kind of candor in my sub-field of technology...
They are required by law to disclose this in SEC filings
Re: Snap Inc. S-1
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Come on, HN. How can nobody be mentioning some of the much cooler stuff available on Google Cloud? https://cloud.google.com/products/machine-learning/ It's a mistake to just compare Google with AWS, thinking in terms of basic storage and computing. That's boring and obviously there are tons of alternatives, including Snap Inc. building it themselves, for the amount of money cited. When it comes to cutting edge AI and…
How is it different from Azure ML and Microsoft Cognitive services?
I'm guessing it's their incredible amount of user data to drive that ML and AI.
Re: Snap Inc. S-1
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funnily, the way I see most people use Snap is "Twitter but video"
Their revenue ($400MM) is impressive for a messaging app, but honestly, the valuation it carries at this point is nuts. It's just an app and I personally don't believe it has a sufficient economic moat to justify that. Where's the ecosystem? How can we bolt on value from having that audience? Unlike Facebook, we won't have a billion people using Snapchat any time soon. Then again, I didn't believe Instagram was worth…
>Their revenue ($400MM) is impressive for a messaging app
Compared to Line and Wechat its really not
Re: Snap Inc. S-1
#160Very interesting to see what they think of their competition: > We face significant competition in almost every aspect of our business both domestically and internationally. This includes larger, more established companies such as Apple, Facebook (including Instagram and WhatsApp), Google (including YouTube), Twitter, Kakao, LINE, Naver (including Snow), and Tencent, which provide their users with a variety of produc…
At least they're honest! Maybe it's the sector I'm in, but I rarely see this kind of candor in my sub-field of technology...
I feel like S1 filings are always brutally honest like this. I believe it's a legal thing, they are afraid of future suits.