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Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

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Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#111

Post by peterwwillis »

Despegar wrote: post #7

I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I saw this headline on Twitter. It's just kisses fingers . So now that everyone knows they are waffling on whether to stay in the business (and have a deadline), Microsoft and Amazon just need to increase the competitive intensity for the next few years to drive Google out and instead of cloud computing being an oligopoly it'll be a duopoly. If you're a startup you should serio…

"The Cloud" is just managed hosting and SaaS/PaaS. There are literally thousands of such providers in the world, and until everything about providing managed hosting and SaaS/PaaS becomes impossible to compete on, there always will be.

The only "duopoly" will be in terms of the hyper-scale size of such providers, but very, very, very few customers actually need such hyper-scale. Not to mention, you literally get to pick and choose how much of their tech you use, limiting any potential risk of lock-in. Not to mention, the hyper-scale providers are probably the most expensive ones!

I think this is all very over-blown. AWS's services are fantastic for scaling up services quickly, and their customer focus is great, but if they were all gone tomorrow we'd still be doing the same things as before, just slower and with less reliable infrastructure.

Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#112

Post by _vertigo »

ianamartin wrote: post #83
clSTophEjUdRanu wrote: post #60

Would this also put a meta deadline on Stadia since, I assume, Stadia utilizes Google Cloud?

I imagine google will keep the technology around to support their own products. I read this to mean they will stop selling access to it.

I find it hard to believe that Stadia would outlast GCloud, but then again I find this entire kerfluffle hard to believe..

Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#113

Post by UncleMeat »

Despegar wrote: post #7

I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I saw this headline on Twitter. It's just kisses fingers . So now that everyone knows they are waffling on whether to stay in the business (and have a deadline), Microsoft and Amazon just need to increase the competitive intensity for the next few years to drive Google out and instead of cloud computing being an oligopoly it'll be a duopoly. If you're a startup you should serio…

This is a ridiculous interpretation.

If Jeff Bezos sent an email to the company saying "We want retail revenue to increase by X% by 2023" would you assume that they'd shutter the whole thing if they didn't meet that goal? Of course not.

Why is a goal and strategy for Google treated differently?

Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#114

Post by zwily »

closeparen wrote: post #69
peteretep wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CTO betting the farm on Google’s cloud is displaying reckless naivety. Google’s arrogance towards its customers is legendary.

So is a CTO betting on Amazon never turning into Oracle.

It’s a game of probabilities, and right now P(Amazon turns into Oracle) < P(Google cancels GCP in 3 years).

Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#115

Post by basch »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #11
Despegar wrote: post #7

I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I saw this headline on Twitter. It's just kisses fingers . So now that everyone knows they are waffling on whether to stay in the business (and have a deadline), Microsoft and Amazon just need to increase the competitive intensity for the next few years to drive Google out and instead of cloud computing being an oligopoly it'll be a duopoly. If you're a startup you should serio…

Microsoft and Amazon don't even need to do anything. Knowing that there might only be 3 years of service remaining, I definitely won't use Google Cloud and I'll tell everyone I know not to use it too.

Microsoft Azure: The cloud service that wont abruptly close out of nowhere with no transition plan leaving you stranded, and a service that actually comes with that thing you call when you need help and support.

The marketing writes itself.

Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#116

Post by tanilama »

scarface74 wrote: post #94
tanilama wrote: post #78

There is NO WAY to retire Google Cloud... This is the ultimate suicide you need to take to destroy public trust, once and for all.

Have you been following Google?

Closely yes.

But I think even the idea of retiring is insane. This is not any free customer facing product. The impact is totally different.

Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#117

Post by saagarjha »

clSTophEjUdRanu wrote: post #72
echelon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From two sources. 1) The article. > The Google unit, which sells computing services to big companies, is under pressure from top management to pass Microsoft or Amazon—currently first and second, respectively, in cloud market share—or risk losing funding. 2) How Google treats all of its other "underperforming" products.

If it's profitable why do they care if it passes Amazon or Microsoft?

Because it's not profitable "enough". Presumably they'd like to reassign their engineers on projects that could make more money.

Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#118

Post by OnlineGladiator »

codingslave wrote: post #79

I still lay claim that google is not hiring the talent that they think they are or claim to be. With such huge budgets and failed product after failed product one has to wonder what is the genesis of their failings. Having met countless arrogant but mediocre engineers that leave Google after four years, I will bring up the old algorithms only hiring nets bad employees with good memories.

I do think their engineers have likely slipped in quality over the years, but that's not the problem. The problem is their culture of product managers being rewarded for launching projects and nobody being rewarded for maintaining projects. They financially incentivize people to launch and kill projects.

It sounds like a leadership problem, because only leadership can change the culture like that.

Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#119

Post by jcrites »

lordnacho wrote: post #55

You have to wonder whether "must be number 1 or 2" came out of some pop-management text. What exactly is wrong with being on the list of potential cloud providers for almost every project? Have you ever been on a non-MS project where someone didn't at least mention GCP instead of AWS? Google being as profitable as it is can afford options. Why not sit around in number 3 spot?

The article claims, if I understood it correctly, that GCP will not be profitable unless it reaches the scale of being at least #2. The implication is that economies of scale are necessary for profitability.

For example, in 2014, James Hamilton spoke about how every day that year, AWS was adding enough new server capacity to support all of Amazon's global infrastructure when it was a $7B annual revenue enterprise (2004). That scale of build-out, server purchasing, etc. presumably justifies and enables significant cost reductions, such as buying equipment from vendors in bulk with steep discounts, or buying or building large facilities at once, etc. AWS is custom designing many parts of its stack including networking chips and software, ARM-based CPUs, and more; that kind of investment is only worthwhile at a certain large scale. This scale presumably motivated AWS's purchase of chipmaker Annapurna Labs in 2015. Some operator of a few colocation facilities, by comparison, could not justify designing custom silicon since their scale would not allow them to recoup the R&D costs. Before AWS reached whatever scale made these kinds of investments worthwhile, they were purchasing commodity hardware.

To pick another example, a company like SpaceX can only be profitable if it launches a certain minimum number of rockets per year. Without enough rocket launches, and demand from customers, you can't recoup the R&D budget needed to design them.

Google has a head start in cloud because their company's existing facilities are already huge. However, public infrastructure has different demands than internal infrastructure, and it sounds like the necessary investments in public have been costly.

Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#120

Post by mullingitover »

UncleMeat wrote: post #113
Despegar wrote: post #7

I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I saw this headline on Twitter. It's just kisses fingers . So now that everyone knows they are waffling on whether to stay in the business (and have a deadline), Microsoft and Amazon just need to increase the competitive intensity for the next few years to drive Google out and instead of cloud computing being an oligopoly it'll be a duopoly. If you're a startup you should serio…

This is a ridiculous interpretation. If Jeff Bezos sent an email to the company saying "We want retail revenue to increase by X% by 2023" would you assume that they'd shutter the whole thing if they didn't meet that goal? Of course not. Why is a goal and strategy for Google treated differently?

Google has a well established track record of killing things that aren't working out.
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