Google Announces Massive Price Drops for Cloud Computing Services, Storage • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Announces Massive Price Drops for Cloud Computing Services, Storage

#61

Post by x0x0 » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 7:09 PM UTC

Vermeulen wrote: post #59

bcantrill wrote: post #50

Full disclosure: I work for a competitor to both GCE and AWS. tl;dr: Until the fundamental issue of trust is addressed, customers will applaud the price drops only because they look forward to AWS responding in kind, not because they plan to actually deploy on GCE. In my experience, GCE has not been a factor in the public cloud market to date. They seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding in that they (apparently)…

do we really need to see a post like this for every submission on a Google service? It seems pretty obvious GCE is fundamentally different than something like Reader/Wave, both consumer products (not platforms), given away for free, and very far from Google's main focus (cloud computing) they are obviously putting incredible resources into GCE - comparing that to some of their consumer app experiments is just ridicul…

it's not very obvious when you look at the amount of service specific code, training, and learning for developers and opps that goes into committing to one of these iaas providers

google appears to create products via the shit and giggles method, with concomitant level of (non)commitment. it's an incredibly fair question to ask if this doesn't move the needle by becoming a $1B+ business inside a year or two, is Larry going to more wood fewer arrows it out of existence? And what would that do to any company with a couple person-decades of work poured into gce apis and services and internal training

also, if larry where smarter he could directly address this, eg: "Come hell or high water I promise google will support this business for a decade"

Re: Google Announces Massive Price Drops for Cloud Computing Services, Storage

#62

Post by TheMagicHorsey » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 7:09 PM UTC

bcantrill wrote: post #50

Full disclosure: I work for a competitor to both GCE and AWS. tl;dr: Until the fundamental issue of trust is addressed, customers will applaud the price drops only because they look forward to AWS responding in kind, not because they plan to actually deploy on GCE. In my experience, GCE has not been a factor in the public cloud market to date. They seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding in that they (apparently)…

We are building on Google App Engine. We have enough trust in Google that we aren't worried about App Engine disappearing. I think this trust deficit is mostly in the eyes of Google's competitors.

For my part, I was more worried about not being able to execute 3rd party modules that aren't supported on App Engine ... but even that apprehension disappeared with today's announcement of managed VMs.

App Engine is a no brainer for me now. The amount I save on not needing an ops team for a long long time overcomes any slight misgivings that Google might abolish App Engine in a few years. I don't think App Engine is going anywhere, BTW. You look at the number of languages they are adding, the number of people they are hiring ... to compare that to Google Reader is a bit ridiculous.

Re: Google Announces Massive Price Drops for Cloud Computing Services, Storage

#63

Post by Lewisham » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 7:10 PM UTC

bcantrill wrote: post #50

Full disclosure: I work for a competitor to both GCE and AWS. tl;dr: Until the fundamental issue of trust is addressed, customers will applaud the price drops only because they look forward to AWS responding in kind, not because they plan to actually deploy on GCE. In my experience, GCE has not been a factor in the public cloud market to date. They seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding in that they (apparently)…

Disclaimer: I work on the Cloud SQL team, but everything here is a completely my own

FWIW, the Google products that are subject to the deprecation policy [1] will give a year's heads-up before they are shut down.

We aren't doing our job well enough if you can't easily transition off Cloud Platform (at least for the components that have obvious competitors... something like BigQuery is necessarily less simple). You should stick with us because you believe in the product, not some sort of lock-in, so you should find it easy to leave within that year.

As for whether that deprecation is likely, it would require a sea change. In the Wired article that came out yesterday [2], the quote is '“We will spend the majority of our development efforts on this New World,” wrote Hölzle.' And this is true, Google really is throwing Technical Infrastructure behind Cloud Platform. That's not to say Cloud Platform going away can't or won't happen, but I feel confident in my job sticking around.

[1] https://developers.google.com/cloud/terms/deprecation [2] http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/03/urs-google-stor...

Re: Google Announces Massive Price Drops for Cloud Computing Services, Storage

#64

Post by hkh » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 7:13 PM UTC

I did the comparison with AWS On-Demand and RIs, and I have to admit, very impressive! Here is the blog: http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/google-sl...

Re: Google Announces Massive Price Drops for Cloud Computing Services, Storage

#65

Post by mythz » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 7:13 PM UTC

casca wrote: post #52

bcantrill wrote: post #50

Full disclosure: I work for a competitor to both GCE and AWS. tl;dr: Until the fundamental issue of trust is addressed, customers will applaud the price drops only because they look forward to AWS responding in kind, not because they plan to actually deploy on GCE. In my experience, GCE has not been a factor in the public cloud market to date. They seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding in that they (apparently)…

This is very much our view. Google products are fine for home and non-critical use, but it's far too risky to rely on them when building something that one expects to have a long lifespan. Unless there's clear money in it for Google's advertising revenue, the chance of it being pulled is too high.

Has Google ever pulled a paid product?

Re: Google Announces Massive Price Drops for Cloud Computing Services, Storage

#66

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 7:14 PM UTC

asharpe wrote: post #16

If and when AWS responds will be quite interesting. GCE launched with lockstep product offering and pricing with AWS. This is the first real movement away from that lockstep position. On one hand it is competitive, on the other hand does it speak to other underlying issues: maybe GCE uptake has not been as expected and needs to do something drastic to compete with AWS?

You always need to do something drastic to compete with a widely perceived market leader; its the cost of being late to the party.

Re: Google Announces Massive Price Drops for Cloud Computing Services, Storage

#67

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 7:15 PM UTC

mythz wrote: post #65

casca wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very much our view. Google products are fine for home and non-critical use, but it's far too risky to rely on them when building something that one expects to have a long lifespan. Unless there's clear money in it for Google's advertising revenue, the chance of it being pulled is too high.

Has Google ever pulled a paid product?

Yes, Checkout. (Wallet isn't a direct replacement.)

Re: Google Announces Massive Price Drops for Cloud Computing Services, Storage

#68

Post by jeromegv » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 7:18 PM UTC

Vermeulen wrote: post #59

bcantrill wrote: post #50

Full disclosure: I work for a competitor to both GCE and AWS. tl;dr: Until the fundamental issue of trust is addressed, customers will applaud the price drops only because they look forward to AWS responding in kind, not because they plan to actually deploy on GCE. In my experience, GCE has not been a factor in the public cloud market to date. They seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding in that they (apparently)…

do we really need to see a post like this for every submission on a Google service? It seems pretty obvious GCE is fundamentally different than something like Reader/Wave, both consumer products (not platforms), given away for free, and very far from Google's main focus (cloud computing) they are obviously putting incredible resources into GCE - comparing that to some of their consumer app experiments is just ridicul…

Do not forget Google Commerce Search was shut down. It was a paid product, used by entreprises and pretty close to Google main focus (search) https://support.google.com/gcs/answer/163357?hl=en http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/14/google-quietly-shutters-com...

Re: Google Announces Massive Price Drops for Cloud Computing Services, Storage

#69

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 7:20 PM UTC

SpikeGronim wrote: post #43

ChuckMcM wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting, this doesn't match my experience, can you say more about how you reason to the claim that Google created a separate 'infrastructure business entity' ?

I am an ex-AWS employee. I can verify that AWS was founded as a new line of business using new servers purchased for AWS. The idea that AWS was started using Amazon's spare capacity is widely repeated but false. Amazon is definitely leveraging their expertise and not their physical machines. Source: I've seen the original pitch deck for Amazon S3.

[deleted]

Re: Google Announces Massive Price Drops for Cloud Computing Services, Storage

#70

Post by petenixey » Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 7:20 PM UTC

Lewisham wrote: post #63

bcantrill wrote: post #50

Full disclosure: I work for a competitor to both GCE and AWS. tl;dr: Until the fundamental issue of trust is addressed, customers will applaud the price drops only because they look forward to AWS responding in kind, not because they plan to actually deploy on GCE. In my experience, GCE has not been a factor in the public cloud market to date. They seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding in that they (apparently)…

Disclaimer: I work on the Cloud SQL team, but everything here is a completely my own FWIW, the Google products that are subject to the deprecation policy [1] will give a year's heads-up before they are shut down. We aren't doing our job well enough if you can't easily transition off Cloud Platform (at least for the components that have obvious competitors... something like BigQuery is necessarily less simple). You sh…

The problem though is that if there is even a chance a service will be shut down (with a year's notice or otherwise) then on a financial basis alone, the cost savings up to that point will be drowned out by the switching cost.

I agree entirely with @bcantrill's comment. I look at Google's PaaS services with the very real concern that they may be switched off or changed at any time.

The reality of this is not just that it will have a financial cost but may well deal a mortal blow to the business. Unless Google makes a long term implicit (big customer) or explicit (rock solid 5-year SLA) commitment to these services they're just too risky to build a complex business on (unless it's a business which is enabled by the marginal cost savings).