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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)

#261

Post by jknoepfler »

crazygringo wrote: post #115
preommr wrote: 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…

GCP starter earning a bad reputation for reliability, transparency, and support on day one. Maybe that's changed? I feel like a see a "GCK is hosed, google support is AWOL, our production environment has been down for 48 hours with no ETA" post on HN once a year.

Again, I'm willing to be wrong about recent reality, but GCP does not have a good reputation with its customers.

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

#262

Post by tap-snap-or-nap »

pknomad wrote: post #121
crazygringo wrote: post #115

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…

> 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…

Most Google customers do not know how to talk to a human Google employee unless you take them to the court.

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

#263

Post by solatic »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #180
mvdtnz wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google very clearly stated in no uncertain terms that Stadia was a real product that they were committed to for the long term. Stating, after the fact, that it was "actually" an "experiment" or a "random little thing" is not just dismissive - it's pure revisionist history.

What folks at google think and what they say publicly aren't the same thing. It's naive to think otherwise. Look to what actually makes sense for them to do and you'll have your answer. Internal folks knew google would walk away in a few years if it didn't work. Stadia was largely a group of people out of the failed and left behind Daydream (VR) project.

So why are we to believe statements that GCP is here to stay? They are, after all, statements to customers who need to hear it to make the purchase. But who knows how they actually think?

The whole reason why Google cannot be trusted here is precisely because of their tendency to be inauthentic in their public statements.

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

#264

Post by mitaphane »

I think YRMV depending on what you're trying to do, but I think the DX & web console experience is much more pleasant on GCP.

On GCP, their services are cleanly organized and have distinct icons that tell me what it does with minimal reading. On AWS, often I'm left scratching my head (see https://awsiconquiz.com/)

The web console design on AWS is catching up (for a long time the UI just looked like an offshoot of the e-commerce site design and wasn't very clean) to GCP, but occasionally you still find elements of the old AWS console design.

Often, it seems like AWS has more leaky abstractions that require you to be more aware of all the other connecting components of their infra services.

For example, trying running managed Airflow on AWS/GCP. Both services require some VPC & storage infra setup to get your Airflow container services running. On GCP, you can spin up Cloud Composer without specifying your VPC or storage bucket details and they'll default them for you.

AWS however, you'll need to have your VPC/S3 already setup ahead and if you've not configured your private/public subnets or S3 IAM policy, you can put your Airflow environment into a non-workable state.

Overall, I think GCP has some advantages of not being saddled with legacy baggage that AWS has with making sure their services are interoperable.

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

#265

Post by d_white »

joedevon wrote: post #160
crazygringo wrote: post #115

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…

I remember losing an argument with my company (that I cofounded) about using Google's awesome recruiting app that was part of GSuite. I said I don't trust Google not to kill it if there are less than a billion users on it. Everyone, and I mean everyone else said, nah. They'd be crazy to kill it. It's part of GSuite. They offer that to businesses and it's too core of a suite for them to kill it. One year later, Google…

It's a shame because Google Hire worked really well. I don't understand the motivation.

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

#266

Post by aravindajju »

Ameo wrote: post #22

My two cents, GCP has a few excellent gems which are better than pretty much any competing cloud offering: - Cloud Run. Best way to deploy containers hands down. All of the benefits of a serverless/containerized workload with all the ease of a traditional VPS deployment. Extremely cheap (pay $0 for side projects with little traffic). - BigQuery. Very easy to use with immense power without having to deal with the deta…

Cloud Run is the only reason to use GCP for me. I haven't seen any product/service that simple to use. It even offers mapping domain names. All my projects run on Cloud Run.

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

#267

Post by fooster »

djbusby wrote: post #244
notyourwork wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair $500/month is peanuts for a yearly revenue to guarantee a contactable human is available for.

Yep, My point exactly. And at $1M/mo...you get humans.

Really dumb humans mostly that won’t answer your questions and deny all compensation.

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

#268

Post by fooster »

lima wrote: post #102
preommr wrote: 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 have talked to Google representatives when I had an issue with my personal gmail.com account through Google One. It was fine and they fixed it. Likewise, as a GCP customer, I've always had a real account rep and support I could talk to.

Yeah we’ve had one too. Actually no two. Wait three. Actually I’ve lost count. In the 6 years I’ve been using GCP we’ve had a new rep practically every quarter. It’s ridiculous.

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

#269

Post by danielmarkbruce »

solatic wrote: post #263
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What folks at google think and what they say publicly aren't the same thing. It's naive to think otherwise. Look to what actually makes sense for them to do and you'll have your answer. Internal folks knew google would walk away in a few years if it didn't work. Stadia was largely a group of people out of the failed and left behind Daydream (VR) project.

So why are we to believe statements that GCP is here to stay? They are, after all, statements to customers who need to hear it to make the purchase. But who knows how they actually think? The whole reason why Google cannot be trusted here is precisely because of their tendency to be inauthentic in their public statements.

I wouldn't believe anything they say. Just look at the numbers. They aren't going to walk away from a business doing about $35 billion per year run rate, growing at 20%+. It isn't in their interest to do so.

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

#270

Post by danielmarkbruce »

timmytokyo wrote: post #260
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What folks at google think and what they say publicly aren't the same thing. It's naive to think otherwise. Look to what actually makes sense for them to do and you'll have your answer. Internal folks knew google would walk away in a few years if it didn't work. Stadia was largely a group of people out of the failed and left behind Daydream (VR) project.

So we as customers need to read tea leaves in order to figure out which services Google considers "real" and which are "experiments"? No thanks.

No, read the financials.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204423...

Look at page 12.

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