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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

#281

Post by Youden »

zelly wrote: post #93
harryh wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a startup you should seriously consider colocation for as many of your workloads as possible The vast majority of startups do not succeed or fail based upon their ability to control their datacenter spend. They succeed or fail based upon their ability to attract customers and grow revenue. Colocating and managing your own servers instead of taking advantage of the ease of using the cloud will only be a dist…

The person you have to hire to manage that would cost 10x a public cloud bill

There are options other than "put your entire infrastructure on Amazon" and "hire someone fulltime to manage your physical infrastructure".

Unless you have some truly massive amount of hardware (in which case it's _definitely_ cheaper to hire someone than pay Amazon), you can generally just set it up and forget about it save for periodic maintenance and emergencies.

So what you really need to pay for is the time of someone who can do these things for you and funnily enough, such a service exists. I believe it's common in the not-startup world: a managed services provider (MSP).

And in the end this really depends on what the business is actually doing. AWS is _really_ price inefficient but in particular for bandwidth. If you're doing anything bandwidth-heavy like video, images or backup, you want to keep the hell away from any kind of cloud.

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

#282

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

mark-r wrote: post #271
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of Google's problem is that Amazon will give you a refund on a shirt you ordered and then have customer support walk you through setting up AWS services to run your website. Amazon is obsessively focused on keeping customers happy and will bend over backward to do so. Google does not have a similar reputation or history.

Google is quite the opposite, they only do things that scale. Making customers happy isn't something that scales, so they avoid it actively.

>> Making customers happy isn't something that scales

Amazon is able to scale 'making customers happy' fairly well.

It is all about the company's priorities and the direction that the leaders steer the company. Perverse incentives reap perverse rewards.

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

#286

Post by antoncohen »

I want to put on end to the "you can't contact Google" comments that comes up every time Google Cloud makes the front page.

You can contact Google Cloud. They are very responsive. I'm currently at a small startup using GCP, and I've been at similarly sized startups with equivalent AWS spends. I have found it easier to have serious discussions with GCP, compared to AWS.

We have dedicated GCP contacts. We actually have a Slack channel we share with our dedicated GCP contacts, so we can easily ask questions. Two of my coworkers just got out of a meeting with Google PMs less than an hour ago. Another one will be meeting at a Google office tomorrow. I had a meeting with about a dozen Google engineers and PMs from their database team(s).

Yes, you have to pay for support. They have a couple different support options, depending on your needs. But you have to pay for support with AWS too.

The one bad thing about Google Cloud support is their Level 1 support. It is very easy to submit a support ticket, and they will respond quickly. But if you are highly technical, and know what you are doing, and can research yourself, Level 1 support it nearly useless. They do make it easy to to escalate, with a prominent Escalate button in the ticket. And you can always escalate through your direct contacts (Account Manager, Technical Account Manager, Customer Engineer). But it would be nice if Level 1 could be bypassed, or were more technical. I think they are trying to iterate on the process. They recently started offering to have a video call a lot of the time, which isn't my cup of tea, but I think it is a sign that they are trying to improve the Level 1 support.

If you are using Google Cloud as part of a business, you will be able to contact them. You will probably have an account manager that you can probably meet in person with. If you pay for support you will be able to submit support tickets, real humans will respond, and respond quickly.

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

#287

Post by btilly »

fooster wrote: post #238
crazygringo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing Google customer support for their free consumer products (nonexistent) with support for paid services. Cloud has extensive support, on par with AWS and Azure. Google isn't a monolithic entity. It doesn't have a single "culture" of being anti-support. Rather, support policies are tied to individual product areas. I agree, support may be lacking for the Pixel, certainly nothing anywhere near Apple's ex…

Their support is garbage. Their only answer to getting better support is to get a TAM. Which is completely ridiculous. Plus their SLA isn't worth the paper it is written on. They deny any SLA compensation unless your application is FT over 3 or more AZs. Garbage.

They deny any SLA compensation unless your application is FT over 3 or more AZs.

For what it's worth, the 3 AZs requirement is their internal policy as well, and they intentionally run exercises where they randomly shut down important looking data centers to verify that failover is working correctly.

If you haven't set up your application to continue working if the plug is pulled on the data center, there is a non-zero chance that it will be shut down due to intentional action.

To be fair, there is also a non-zero chance that it will be shut down due to other people's actions. My two favorite examples are, "Gypsies stole the cables to the data center so that they could sell the metal in it" and "Hunters used the shiny supports for the cables for target practice." These happened in Eastern Europe and Oregon respectively.

On the flip side, their tools make it really easy to have your software run extremely robustly. Even if Gypsies or hunters attempt to ruin your day.

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

#288

Post by mikepurvis »

sylens wrote: post #220
throwawayhhakdl wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stadia would probably crumble alongside GCP by necessity too, right?

Stadia is a brute force attempt to grow GCP revenue

The Stadia pro tier fee is just $9.99/mo. The GPU and CPU you could consume playing a AAA game on that (yes, even on the purported "medium" settings) for just a few hours a day surely far exceeds what it could be sold for wholesale.

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

#289

Post by Spooky23 »

zapita wrote: post #144

AWS is unassailable as number one, but Azure is more fragile than they might appear in their #2 position. They use their Office online revenue to boost their numbers (EDIT: apparently they don't do that anymore) , and their utilization is probably lower than the competition because they rely heavily on bundling new cloud services into legacy contracts at renewal to reach their targets. So lots of Office / Outlook / A…

I'd disagree. Microsoft has an EA with every significant corporate entity, and basically taxes everyone. They have the ability to leverage those relationships unlike any other.

Azure is the one to beat, IMO.

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

#290

Post by mehdix »

crazygringo wrote: post #104
umvi wrote: post #9

If they pour all of their efforts into customer experience, maybe they can stay in the game. I personally am terrified of using Google Cloud. I'm afraid something will go wrong and I won't be able to talk to a human. I've heard so many stories about the "stone wall" that is Google customer support. Also, I'm afraid the rug will get pulled out from under me if I decide to go all in given their history of axing project…

You're confusing Google customer support for their free consumer products (nonexistent) with support for paid services. Cloud has extensive support, on par with AWS and Azure. Google isn't a monolithic entity. It doesn't have a single "culture" of being anti-support. Rather, support policies are tied to individual product areas. I agree, support may be lacking for the Pixel, certainly nothing anywhere near Apple's ex…

I'm not an Apple dev, but you just reminded me of Apple's excellent support. I got a problem on my development account and immediately received a phone call from a human helping me solving the issue.
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