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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

#641

Post by retpirato »

gerash wrote: post #623
scarejunba wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was genuinely not a factor when we signed a 1E8 deal with GCP. What was a factor: (non-exhaustive) * Access to their developers for core services * Discounts available * Quality of support * Access Controls / Audit / Budgeting * Dev Tools around Infra * Future Roadmap Not one of us ever would have chosen the shutdown of Plus/Reader/Wave as a factor. As a startup we hard pivoted in order to succeed. No surprise t…

I agree that this seems to be a narrative that exists only inside the HN bubble. The fact that a multi million dollar business decision is being made not by running numbers and future roadmap but by one guy in the meeting saying "wait! they shuttered Reader, my favorite RSS reader. Oh no, these other guys killed Zune, my favorite music player. Wait a minute, don't tell me these are the same people who killed Firephon…

you're missing the point. Google has a bad habit of shelving services that people use. If it's never happened to anything you use, good for you, but if I was in a position to make a choice like that I'd be very hesitant to go with a company with such a history of shutting down services.

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

#642

Post by zippygoogler »

zwily wrote: post #629
jacques_chester wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect this is down to how it's phrased by someone who may not be familiar with strategic planning. It's common for businesses to work out several scenarios and estimate their outcomes. Then you look at the investment outcomes of those scenarios. So quite plausibly there might have been these scenarios: 1. Invest More + High Growth 2. Invest More + Low Growth 3. Maintain Investment + High Growth 4. Maintain Invest…

I can’t imagine Amazon execs having a discussion about getting out of the cloud business. But Google doing it seems totally believable. See the problem?

Dude, You're comparing apples and oranges. It makes no sense to compare GCP in 2017/2018 which is when the article refers to this conversation to AWS which predates it by 10 years. You don't think that AWS execs and Amazon execs had conversation about profitability in 2006?

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

#643

Post by adventured »

rhizome wrote: post #577
QuinnyPig wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the entire problem. Swap “Google” for “AWS” in the article and you’d have legions of folks calling foul on the article. Instead, most folks are nodding along to the article going “yep, seems like something Google would do all right…” Google’s problem remains its reputation for turning things off.

> Google’s problem remains its reputation for turning things off. I'd put it this way: Google has a reputation for turning things off, but its _problem_ is an inability to stop doing that, to commit to its users/customers. In other contexts this could be written in terms of addiction. If I were Sergey and Larry, this would be the thing I'd be retiring over, and I'm not sure Suchar can change it.

If Satya Nadella could get Microsoft to move beyond its Windows-all-or-nothing pathology, someone in charge at Google (including the two founders that vote-control the entire company directly - they can de facto hand Sundar the power to act as he needs to) can trivially put a stop to the relationship commitment issues at Google.

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

#644

Post by gurjeet »

rhizome wrote: post #577
QuinnyPig wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the entire problem. Swap “Google” for “AWS” in the article and you’d have legions of folks calling foul on the article. Instead, most folks are nodding along to the article going “yep, seems like something Google would do all right…” Google’s problem remains its reputation for turning things off.

> Google’s problem remains its reputation for turning things off. I'd put it this way: Google has a reputation for turning things off, but its _problem_ is an inability to stop doing that, to commit to its users/customers. In other contexts this could be written in terms of addiction. If I were Sergey and Larry, this would be the thing I'd be retiring over, and I'm not sure Suchar can change it.

s/Suchar/Sundar/

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

#645

Post by [deleted] »

altgoogler wrote: post #414

Googler here. My opinions are my own; I have no non-public knowledge on this topic. I do not understand the hyperbole around this report. Nowhere does it say that Google plans to shutter GCP if it doesn't reach #1 by 2023. > said people with knowledge of the matter. As in, people who may not have even been at said meeting which took place nearly two years ago, under a different VP and now a different CEO, and saw som…

[deleted]

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

#646

Post by throwaway2048 »

adventured wrote: post #643
rhizome wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google’s problem remains its reputation for turning things off. I'd put it this way: Google has a reputation for turning things off, but its _problem_ is an inability to stop doing that, to commit to its users/customers. In other contexts this could be written in terms of addiction. If I were Sergey and Larry, this would be the thing I'd be retiring over, and I'm not sure Suchar can change it.

If Satya Nadella could get Microsoft to move beyond its Windows-all-or-nothing pathology, someone in charge at Google (including the two founders that vote-control the entire company directly - they can de facto hand Sundar the power to act as he needs to) can trivially put a stop to the relationship commitment issues at Google.

Its far from trivial to change an entire corporate culture on a dime.

From everything we have seen of Google's culture, working on new projects is exciting and is absolutely the way to get promoted.

Doing maintenance work, especially on products that aren't wildly successful gets you no attention, no staff, no funding, and probably more than a little tongue waging.

The CEO cant just change all that with directives, even if they do something extreme like a "No Depreciations" policy, products are liable to be depreciated in all but name (Joe the intern takes care of it every 5th Tuesday, technically not depreciated) by sheer corporate momentum alone, nobody wants to be stuck with a dead fish, even if its now illegal to openly comment on how much it stinks.

It would require change at every level of Google to place value into fixing/improving existing projects, rather than all the glory going to greenfield development.

Considering the kind of "kingmaker" culture Google's mentality breeds, ie what gets me ahead is gathering resources to focus on my project, changing things to a setup where contributing to other peoples silos is welcome and common is going to be an extremely difficult prospect because virtually all the people with power inside Google got that way by carefully tending their fiefdom, they aren't just going to throw that all a way, no matter what any executive says.

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

#647

Post by rhacker »

altgoogler wrote: post #414

Googler here. My opinions are my own; I have no non-public knowledge on this topic. I do not understand the hyperbole around this report. Nowhere does it say that Google plans to shutter GCP if it doesn't reach #1 by 2023. > said people with knowledge of the matter. As in, people who may not have even been at said meeting which took place nearly two years ago, under a different VP and now a different CEO, and saw som…

> You set goals, you decide what happens when those goals are met. Furthermore, there is no concrete assertion here that what happens if this deadline is passed. "at risk of losing funding" can literally mean anything from changing FTE allocation to capital expenses to a million other things that get discussed at an executive level.

No customer is going to sink risk into a statement like that. Everyone wants to know that the investment increases and only increases.

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

#648

Post by cek »

Angostura wrote: post #411
cek wrote: post #12

Reminds me of Ray Noorda[1]. Nothing good ever happens when companies focus entirely on their competitors. If Google really wants to beat Amazon & Microsoft in "Cloud", they should focus entirely on the customer and the value they can provide that customer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Noorda

Noorda’s problem was that his product - a file server was swiftly turning into a commodity

What about WordPerfect?

Noorda's problem was he was completely, utterly, obsessed with his competition.

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

#649

Post by spicyramen »

Cloud is not about developers anymore: is not about tech. Why? Because enterprises understand that the foundation for their apps exists, if not their Cloud reps will listen and develop it for them as long as you are big big contract. Now the power relies all along in decision makers, Google reputation is not good there. Getting Fortune 500, Government contracts is very very very unlikely as in reality from Cx0 perspective...AWS/Microsoft have been there always...new things in Infrastructure...probably not unless you really don't want to give any business to AWS (Walmart/Target) and experimenting the new enterprise Google...no thanks

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

#650

Post by freehunter »

manigandham wrote: post #585
mkolodny wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > The group [which included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Alphabet chief financial officer Ruth Porat and then-CEO of Alphabet Larry Page] even talked about—and eventually dismissed—the idea of leaving the market entirely It's sounds like shutting down GCP at some point is definitely a possibility.

Why does "talked about" mean so much but "eventually dismissed" mean nothing? Are you selectively reading this?

Why does “dismissed” mean so much but “eventually” mean nothing? That makes it sounds like it was a pretty serious conversation where most people up to this point may have been using GCP with the idea that shutting it down was never a real option for Google.
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