Live data from Hacker News

I think GCP is better than AWS (2020)

nandovillalba.medium.com

121–130 of 409 posts

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

#121
post #82

I'll continue beating the dead horse: I don't trust Google. At best GCP is slightly better than AWS (debatable), which is not enough to offset the risk because of how much of a pain it is to switch cloud providers. Even if GCP shutting down is one in a million, aws shutting down is 1 in ten million. Also, I keep getting the feeling that Google keeps trying to automate their customer service through bots. I have use q…

I think this is an unfortunate conflation of free Gmail/etc. consumer products with GCP. All of what you say is pretty accurate for free-tier Gmail/etc. No customer service, risk of an account getting blocked and nothing you can do, new apps not finding success and getting cancelled. But none of it is the case with GCP. Customer service is great and you can reach real people easily, paid accounts aren't getting shut…

> I think this is an unfortunate conflation of free Gmail/etc.

I would also say that this is a byproduct of how google treats its customers, even on paid platforms. I used to manage Google Workspace few years ago (2016 -> 2020) and GCP (2018-2019) and I remember the difficulty I faced when attempting to reach a human. Even if I were to able to reach someone, I got someone who clearly was a tier 1 support, who wanted me to troubleshoot things by "turnings things off and back on again".

I've also seen blog posts (some even on hacker news) mirroring my experiences, so I know it's not just a "me thing".

Google is reaping what it sowed.

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

#122
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AppEngine today is wildly different to the App Engine I fell in love with 15 years ago. Since you're checking notes, please check out all the AE service deprecation notes. Disclosure: I worked for Google for ~10 years, and I fought internally many of those deprecation decisions. I did not succeed.

> AppEngine today is wildly different to the App Engine I fell in love with 15 years ago. I see that as a good thing, it means they are still working on it.

Have you actually been using it for 15 years?

My guess is not, or you would have a different opinion. But that's just a guess

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

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is an unfortunate conflation of free Gmail/etc. consumer products with GCP. All of what you say is pretty accurate for free-tier Gmail/etc. No customer service, risk of an account getting blocked and nothing you can do, new apps not finding success and getting cancelled. But none of it is the case with GCP. Customer service is great and you can reach real people easily, paid accounts aren't getting shut…

> And neither GCP nor AWS is getting shut down. Even using the numbers you give, the answer is that the risk of either shutting down is zero for all intents and purposes. There's no reason to split hairs over which of two infinitesimally unlikely events is more likely. That's what I thought for a long time about google domains. Yet here we are.

Google Domains made Google the equivalent of $0 and would teach them nothing about operating their core businesses.

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

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is an unfortunate conflation of free Gmail/etc. consumer products with GCP. All of what you say is pretty accurate for free-tier Gmail/etc. No customer service, risk of an account getting blocked and nothing you can do, new apps not finding success and getting cancelled. But none of it is the case with GCP. Customer service is great and you can reach real people easily, paid accounts aren't getting shut…

> And neither GCP nor AWS is getting shut down. Even using the numbers you give, the answer is that the risk of either shutting down is zero for all intents and purposes. There's no reason to split hairs over which of two infinitesimally unlikely events is more likely. That's what I thought for a long time about google domains. Yet here we are.

Ugh. So it was first reported that Google Domains was being abandoned, but Google Cloud Domains was still just fine. I thought -- exactly, you can count on their paid enterprise cloud services.

I looked it up now to reconfirm, and it turns out a few days later it came out that Google Cloud Domains was also being shut down? [1]

WTF. OK, well that's idiotic. Maybe I have to take back my parent comment then. That's one of the dumbest corporate own-goals I've ever heard of.

That's not something I can even begin to explain or understand at all.

[1] https://cloud.google.com/domains/docs/deprecations/feature-d...

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

#125
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work in GCP. They are definitely committed to it. Search, Android, Google Cloud, YouTube - definitely committed. It's the random little things they build too many of and hence close down. They never really understood branding. Slapping Google on everything doesn't help, it hurts. Many things are actually experiments and shouldn't be marketed as more than that.

> They are definitely committed to it. Google on Stadia: October 2019 - "It is a long term view that Google is taking" November 2020 - "roadmap of about 400 games in development right now from 200 developers [...] 2023 is really kind of where we’re aiming our sights" February 2021 - "building Stadia into a long-term, sustainable business [...] remain committed to Stadia as a platform" September 2021 - "gaming is an i…

Yup, hence the "Many things are actually experiments and shouldn't be marketed as more than that" and/or "random little things".

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

#126
post #82

I'll continue beating the dead horse: I don't trust Google. At best GCP is slightly better than AWS (debatable), which is not enough to offset the risk because of how much of a pain it is to switch cloud providers. Even if GCP shutting down is one in a million, aws shutting down is 1 in ten million. Also, I keep getting the feeling that Google keeps trying to automate their customer service through bots. I have use q…

I think this is an unfortunate conflation of free Gmail/etc. consumer products with GCP. All of what you say is pretty accurate for free-tier Gmail/etc. No customer service, risk of an account getting blocked and nothing you can do, new apps not finding success and getting cancelled. But none of it is the case with GCP. Customer service is great and you can reach real people easily, paid accounts aren't getting shut…

I did mostly agree with you that GCP is not Google etc etc until a couple weeks ago when they suddenly announced that they will move most of Policy Intelligence under Security Command Center Premium, throwing most of their customers security teams under the bus.

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

#127
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…

GCP support is a joke compared to AWS.

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

#128
post #82

I'll continue beating the dead horse: I don't trust Google. At best GCP is slightly better than AWS (debatable), which is not enough to offset the risk because of how much of a pain it is to switch cloud providers. Even if GCP shutting down is one in a million, aws shutting down is 1 in ten million. Also, I keep getting the feeling that Google keeps trying to automate their customer service through bots. I have use q…

I think this is an unfortunate conflation of free Gmail/etc. consumer products with GCP. All of what you say is pretty accurate for free-tier Gmail/etc. No customer service, risk of an account getting blocked and nothing you can do, new apps not finding success and getting cancelled. But none of it is the case with GCP. Customer service is great and you can reach real people easily, paid accounts aren't getting shut…

> none of it is the case with GCP. Customer service is great and you can reach real people easily

I'm curious how recent your experience was with GCP support? Sadly several contacts of mine were not long ago laid off from working there. Many of them had 10+ years industry experience. Presumably their roles were off-shored but from my experiences with other companies who have off-shored technical support, I don't imagine you'd get the same customer experience as you did before.

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

#129
One fundamental difference between GCP and AWS is that AWS puts zones in different buildings in the same, well, "region," whereas GCP just isolated them in the same building.

Not the end of the world, but you shouldn't assume that by deploying things regionally with GCP you will be protected against, idk, a fire or water issue that has building-wide impact.

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

#130
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AppEngine today is wildly different to the App Engine I fell in love with 15 years ago. Since you're checking notes, please check out all the AE service deprecation notes. Disclosure: I worked for Google for ~10 years, and I fought internally many of those deprecation decisions. I did not succeed.

> AppEngine today is wildly different to the App Engine I fell in love with 15 years ago. I see that as a good thing, it means they are still working on it.

backwards compatibility is a big deal in infrastructure. when a serious provider has bold new ideas, you release appengine2.
Post reply on HN