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Snap commits $2B over 5 years for Google Cloud infrastructure

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Re: Snap commits $2B over 5 years for Google Cloud infrastructure

#51
post #10

This makes no sense. One cannot spend $33M a month on Google Cloud. (Remember that it's half the price of AWS, and given a contract of that magnitude it's possible that they negotiated yet another half off). The amount of hardware and services one would get for that bill is insane. Snapchat doesn't need that much computing power and storage.

Maybe $400M/year unlocks Google customer support?

Funny 'cause it's true. :)

Re: Snap commits $2B over 5 years for Google Cloud infrastructure

#52
post #10

This makes no sense. One cannot spend $33M a month on Google Cloud. (Remember that it's half the price of AWS, and given a contract of that magnitude it's possible that they negotiated yet another half off). The amount of hardware and services one would get for that bill is insane. Snapchat doesn't need that much computing power and storage.

Maybe $400M/year unlocks Google customer support?

Best comment ever

Re: Snap commits $2B over 5 years for Google Cloud infrastructure

#53

So they hit $400m of revenue in 2016 and have committed to spend at least that much on infrastructure each year for the next 5 years? After all the costs for staffing and everything else they better I hope they achieve amazing growth if they ever intend to profit.

Will Snap exist in 5 years?

Will "Google Cloud Platform" exist in 5 years?

Re: Snap commits $2B over 5 years for Google Cloud infrastructure

#54

Needing this amount of resources implies that Snap is expecting huge growth. This sounds like a really bad move on their part and they should have committed to building out their own infrastructure on 'bare metal' over the next 5 years instead. If you read their S-1, they list a dependence on Google cloud as one of their big risk factors. Yet they then go ahead and make this commitment instead of working towards elim…

Precisely.

Google Cloud is a good idea when you don't know how much infrastructure you need.

Of course, maybe they got some killer promotional deal with Google. Seems likely.

Re: Snap commits $2B over 5 years for Google Cloud infrastructure

#55

Needing this amount of resources implies that Snap is expecting huge growth. This sounds like a really bad move on their part and they should have committed to building out their own infrastructure on 'bare metal' over the next 5 years instead. If you read their S-1, they list a dependence on Google cloud as one of their big risk factors. Yet they then go ahead and make this commitment instead of working towards elim…

Facebook is not a good example here. Back to early 2000s there was no Cloud infra so they started from inhouse. Snap is a different story since they not only use GCloud but also have Google engineers support and oncall for them. Snap focuses on the Product and Growth that creates much more value.

Re: Snap commits $2B over 5 years for Google Cloud infrastructure

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easily move? It seems to me that you have no serious experience in the real world. There's something called "data gravity", and the non-secondary issue of how to migrate a "live" system (in production) from one cloud to another over the course of typically several weeks. Moving from one cloud to another, even with containers, is never easy at large scale. (source: I have worked at AWS for 6 years, at VMware for 2, an…

I consider 'toomuchtodo a voice of authority on operations based on much reading and discussion (particularly on moving to physical, which we've discussed before), have performed the very exercise being discussed four times in my own career ranging from a couple cabinets to a couple hundred million in capital, completely agree with the entire comment to which you are replying, and feel that your jab about "serious ex…

I really appreciate the kind words, and wish I had more than one upvote for your comment. I'm not here for profit or ego, just to share what I have learned and experienced for the benefit of others. "I am old, here are my mistakes, do not make them" sort of thing. Whether anyone believes it, there's a serious Bay Area echo chamber (which HN overlaps with); there is a whole tech world out there that isn't startup culture/tools/methodologies.

If you're ever in Tampa or Chicago, let's grab a beer or dinner my treat. Would love to share war stories.

Re: Snap commits $2B over 5 years for Google Cloud infrastructure

#57
post #21

I'm confused by this high cost, sure you might need lots of compute, but storage tends to dominate over the long term. Isn't Snapchat supposed to delete data after 30s or whatever? Why this insanely high cost? Can somebody shed some light.

I imagine bandwidth is a major cost center.

Last time I checked, Google and AWS both had very, very high egress prices. At these levels, it's far cheaper to connect to a Tier 1 provider or three.

Re: Snap commits $2B over 5 years for Google Cloud infrastructure

#58

Needing this amount of resources implies that Snap is expecting huge growth. This sounds like a really bad move on their part and they should have committed to building out their own infrastructure on 'bare metal' over the next 5 years instead. If you read their S-1, they list a dependence on Google cloud as one of their big risk factors. Yet they then go ahead and make this commitment instead of working towards elim…

It might be a sort of signaling that google is a potential buyer.

Re: Snap commits $2B over 5 years for Google Cloud infrastructure

#59
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would invest in Snapchat at any valuation that is below Facebook's. Sounds crazy but the first time I opened the app (on a friend's phone) and it landed me on a camera screen (almost forcing to contribute content to use the product) I felt like the guys were going to win whatever space they were in.

Facebook is worth $377B today. Could you explain why Snapchat is or will be worth that much?

If facebook loses users to snapchat in a massive way, it could happen.

Otherwise they wouldnt have tried to buy snapchat.

Re: Snap commits $2B over 5 years for Google Cloud infrastructure

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that speaks about the scale at which they are operating in Google Cloud. Diane Green mentioned in a recent conference that one of their healthcare customers collect about 2 PB / user. Lot of companies struggle with managing / extracting value from data. Thats where the bottle neck is usually. If they have capability to handle more data, overtime their services evolve to collect, store and process more data. O…

By "user", you mean an entire company that houses data on thousands or perhaps millions of patients, right?

Nop. By user I mean per person, not company. Now take a deep breath and think about the scale of Google Cloud.
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