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Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

cloud.google.com

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Re: Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

#53
post #5

Before folks start comparing this to Reader or point to the general "Google shuts things down" narrative, Prediction API has been superset by the array of ML APIs and Google Cloud ML, found at [0]. [0] https://cloud.google.com/products/machine-learning/ (work at G)

I downvoted this comment, because the general "Google shuts things down" narrative remains. Companies invested real money in integrating Google's existing services. If Google's New API is so easy to switch to, and companies will get value from the switch, then they would do it automatically. The truth is that the old API probably worked perfectly fine for some companies, who are now forced to spend time and money mig…

Despite generally disagreeing with the comment I upvoted the parent because I think it provides an important counterpoint to the discussion.

I think it's too common to make lazy assumptions and not even read the article when it comes to a stereotype (true or not) such as Google's countless EOL'd services.

And personally I feel like Google's endgame isn't to provide the best consumer/enterprise cloud services a la AWS. They're just subsidizing their own endeavors in mass computing with presumably a tidy profit on the side. They can afford to alienate a customer here and there because they don't need a customer here and there. Which is an entirely rational thing to do for a corporation.

Re: Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

#54
post #5

Before folks start comparing this to Reader or point to the general "Google shuts things down" narrative, Prediction API has been superset by the array of ML APIs and Google Cloud ML, found at [0]. [0] https://cloud.google.com/products/machine-learning/ (work at G)

I downvoted this comment, because the general "Google shuts things down" narrative remains. Companies invested real money in integrating Google's existing services. If Google's New API is so easy to switch to, and companies will get value from the switch, then they would do it automatically. The truth is that the old API probably worked perfectly fine for some companies, who are now forced to spend time and money mig…

Everyone deprecates APIs in favor of more evolved ones. It's pretty standard. If they didn't, innovation would falter.

If Google was shutting down the capability of doing something, like reader, that would be a different issue.

Re: Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

#55
post #30

"Let's build our entire stack around Google Cloud. I'm sure they won't shut down an API we depend on"

This one-year-long deprecation warning comes atop what is a fairly reasonable migration path for most users. I have yet to hear of a single user of any size whose “entire stack” relied on a single API, let alone this one, and who would be left without a faster, easier, or less expensive option in this move. But you might have info I do not! (Work at Google Cloud)

I didn't mean to suggest you guys did the wrong thing -- it was just a joke. However Google is known for shutting down services whenever they feel like it and I think that you can see from some of the other comments in this thread that traditionally people expect things to be supported for much longer if they're going to build on top of it for something serious.

Re: Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still might not be a great idea for Google to routinely shut down APIs in favor of other APIs if they want people to actually rely on its cloud services. It doesn't look like Google is interested in trying to make the migration particularly easy either: > Q: What will happen with my existing models? > A: You must recreate your existing Prediction API models using Cloud Machine Learning Engine. To learn more, pleas…

They _are_ giving a 1 year notice.

Which is one thing if your product is on a yearly (or quicker) release cycle. But it's a whole different level of pain if the project is in maintenance mode and the development team has already been reassigned to other projects.

Re: Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted this comment, because the general "Google shuts things down" narrative remains. Companies invested real money in integrating Google's existing services. If Google's New API is so easy to switch to, and companies will get value from the switch, then they would do it automatically. The truth is that the old API probably worked perfectly fine for some companies, who are now forced to spend time and money mig…

Everyone deprecates APIs in favor of more evolved ones. It's pretty standard. If they didn't, innovation would falter. If Google was shutting down the capability of doing something, like reader, that would be a different issue.

There's a rather long discussion in this very thread about how AWS doesn't.

Re: Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

#58

> Q: What will happen with my existing models? > A: You must recreate your existing Prediction API models using Cloud Machine Learning Engine. To learn more, please read our documentation about creating models on Cloud Machine Learning Engine. Slightly edited and corrected answer should be > A: You must recreate your existing Prediction API models using Cloud Machine Learning Engine. But, you know what? You must recr…

Prediction API was closed source and proprietary. Cloud Machine Learning Engine is open source Tensorflow.

You can run these models on prem, on AWS, etc.

Re: Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

#59

One thing that I find so amazing about AWS (Amazon Web Services) is that I'm not aware of them ever EOLing one of their apis (I could be wrong). We still have a bunch of code that still uses SimpleDB and even though they haven't promoted SDB for a while, they haven't EOLed it.

It's been unavailable from the scope of newly created accounts for quite a while

Re: Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

#60
post #30

"Let's build our entire stack around Google Cloud. I'm sure they won't shut down an API we depend on"

This one-year-long deprecation warning comes atop what is a fairly reasonable migration path for most users. I have yet to hear of a single user of any size whose “entire stack” relied on a single API, let alone this one, and who would be left without a faster, easier, or less expensive option in this move. But you might have info I do not! (Work at Google Cloud)

If that's really the official attitude within Google, then I will stay away from using Google's APIs and will advise other companies to do the same.

We should be talking about 10-year deprecation for APIs. Not 1 year.

Software development is a huge capital expense. Talented developers are a limited resource. Forcing your paying customers to go spend a bunch of valuable $$$ and time in order to just move to the latest version of your API -- not even to gain any new functionality, but to keep what was working already! -- is simply unacceptable.

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