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I think GCP is better than AWS (2020)

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Re: I think GCP is better than AWS (2020)

#31
post #24
post #7

I don't buy the article's argument around the "Fear that GCP may be abandoned by Google". Yes, it is highly unlikely that Google will wake-up one day and announce a deprecation day for GCP, like they did with dozens of other products. What is not unlikely though is that they under-invest in it compared to AWS, and being a 2nd or 3rd player, they would fall behind in products and/or reliability, unable to compete on p…

It can create problems from a different angle, though. Google might lock your account for no reason for a week, without any explanation. If that happens, it's your problem if you lose your whole business after a week of downtime. Since it's Google, you can't even contact support. This has happened to me a couple of times. Once, my account was locked for a day because their system flagged one of my servers for suspici…

That's exactly why would I newer support opting for GCP.

With AWS, we have our account manager, whom I can call and he actually has some powers and can fix and do stuff for us.

Re: I think GCP is better than AWS (2020)

#32

My biggest challenge with GCP is that I'm still not convinced Google cares that much about this division. They acquired Looker, fired the customer service staff, and then set it out to crumble. Looker used to be LOVED by its customers but now they were forced to make their semantic layer work with Tableau. Also, I'm still not convinced Google cares about divisions that aren't linked to advertising. Google Search, Gma…

Considering their earnings today being down in cloud I think I would rightfully worry about their long term commitment.

GCP revenue is up 28% YoY, and it went from a $440M quarterly loss in 2022 Q3 to a $266M profit 2023 Q3. Who'd shut down a business like that?

Re: I think GCP is better than AWS (2020)

#33
post #31
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can create problems from a different angle, though. Google might lock your account for no reason for a week, without any explanation. If that happens, it's your problem if you lose your whole business after a week of downtime. Since it's Google, you can't even contact support. This has happened to me a couple of times. Once, my account was locked for a day because their system flagged one of my servers for suspici…

That's exactly why would I newer support opting for GCP. With AWS, we have our account manager, whom I can call and he actually has some powers and can fix and do stuff for us.

Surprise surprise, paid GCP customers get the same.

Re: I think GCP is better than AWS (2020)

#34
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can create problems from a different angle, though. Google might lock your account for no reason for a week, without any explanation. If that happens, it's your problem if you lose your whole business after a week of downtime. Since it's Google, you can't even contact support. This has happened to me a couple of times. Once, my account was locked for a day because their system flagged one of my servers for suspici…

GCP doesn't really have the Google problem of lacking support contacts. I've managed relationships with GCP for a couple of different companies now (from startup to mid-size enterprise), and in all cases I had multiple dedicated account reps that I could not only get on a phone, but frequently met with in person. Maybe the story is different for very very small fish, but I had decent experiences with support even at…

Maybe it also depends on a country? In my country the AWS support is incomparable.

Re: I think GCP is better than AWS (2020)

#35
post #31
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can create problems from a different angle, though. Google might lock your account for no reason for a week, without any explanation. If that happens, it's your problem if you lose your whole business after a week of downtime. Since it's Google, you can't even contact support. This has happened to me a couple of times. Once, my account was locked for a day because their system flagged one of my servers for suspici…

That's exactly why would I newer support opting for GCP. With AWS, we have our account manager, whom I can call and he actually has some powers and can fix and do stuff for us.

[deleted]

Re: I think GCP is better than AWS (2020)

#36

I find the GCP documentation to be lacking compared to AWS. Specifically while using GCP with Terraform I hit more frustrating nonsense error messages with little to no google hits or undocumented behavior around IAM config compared to my experience doing similar things on AWS.

I'm a technical writing manager on GCP, and we are actively working on improving Terraform documentation. Thank you for bringing up two significant problems with using TF on GCP.

If you are willing (and of course have the time), we would love to hear other issues you - or anyone else who reads this thread - are having with TF documentation on GCP as we try and make things better.

Re: I think GCP is better than AWS (2020)

#37
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cannot imagine what a significant argument would be to use AWS instead of GCP that outweighs the benefits and the seemingly integrated services. Confidence that it will continue to exist in the next 3-10 years?

What odds would you like to bet that GCP is going to be gone in 10 years?

The sentiment is probably not abou GCP as a whole, but about its trigger happiness when it comes to deprecating services.

Fun read:

https://steve-yegge.medium.com/dear-google-cloud-your-deprec...

Re: I think GCP is better than AWS (2020)

#38
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly why would I newer support opting for GCP. With AWS, we have our account manager, whom I can call and he actually has some powers and can fix and do stuff for us.

Surprise surprise, paid GCP customers get the same.

Not in my experience, unfortunately. The reps we got with GCP could give us advice, but no real powers to push stuff or solve problems, it felt more like L1 support. As described bellow, maybe it depends on a company size and/or a country.

Re: I think GCP is better than AWS (2020)

#39
post #25
post #14

I share the same experience and opinion. I cannot imagine what a significant argument would be to use AWS instead of GCP that outweighs the benefits and the seemingly integrated services. GCP has so far covered 99% of my use cases, and I can testify that I have a lot of advanced cases linked to data management, information security, networking and more. I am open and do not judge AWS, and perhaps its also a matter of…

For a fairly simple setup AWS automates a lot of things. If I just want an EC2 instance and a database, the VPC already exists and there is now even a button on an RDS that says something like "connect to ec2" which sets up the security groups on both for you. However the argument against using GCP has already been stated in this thread multiple times. - Will it exist in 3-5 years. Google has a reputation for a reaso…

Nailed it. When we've had problems with AWS, I could drop our rep an email and be on a conference call with the engineers who run the service a day later. That not for a giant account, either.

They'd also periodically reach out to offer free consulting services that would cut our monthly bill. They were upfront about the motivation: they wanted us to integrate more of their services. The upside for us was that we could get better, cheaper service. If you're planning on sticking with them anyway, that's a very attractive offer.

Meanwhile, the support venue for our enterprise Google Workspace account was a mutual support web forum as far as I could tell.

Unless you've experienced both, it's hard to believe how radically differently the 2 companies handle customer support.

Re: I think GCP is better than AWS (2020)

#40
post #25
post #14

I share the same experience and opinion. I cannot imagine what a significant argument would be to use AWS instead of GCP that outweighs the benefits and the seemingly integrated services. GCP has so far covered 99% of my use cases, and I can testify that I have a lot of advanced cases linked to data management, information security, networking and more. I am open and do not judge AWS, and perhaps its also a matter of…

For a fairly simple setup AWS automates a lot of things. If I just want an EC2 instance and a database, the VPC already exists and there is now even a button on an RDS that says something like "connect to ec2" which sets up the security groups on both for you. However the argument against using GCP has already been stated in this thread multiple times. - Will it exist in 3-5 years. Google has a reputation for a reaso…

The argument being stated multiple times doesn't mean it is valid.

Amazon, Microsoft and Google have all launched roughly as many products in the last couple of decades, and killed roughly as many of them unceremoniously after the products failed. (Amazon execs used to outright brag to the media about how many products they killed, since it showed that they were daring to take risks.)

AWS, Azure and GCP have also all launched roughly the same product portfolios, and each of them killed basically none of those products.

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