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Removing data transfer fees when moving off Google Cloud

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Re: Removing data transfer fees when moving off Google Cloud

#11

Post by SteveNuts »

kaonwarb wrote: post #8
seatac76 wrote: post #6

Getting ahead of antitrust I see. Big tech has gotten so big that we will now see this peace meal stuff being done to appease regulators to stave off any major action.

Google Cloud has ~10% market share; I don't think this is an antitrust avoidance play. More likely, it's removing a concern companies might have with bringing workloads onto a relatively smaller player. Especially one that has a history of discontinuing products.

> Especially one that has a history of discontinuing products.

Let's just hope this isn't step 1 for their plan to do exactly that.

Re: Removing data transfer fees when moving off Google Cloud

#12

Post by jdon »

Looks like it's a response to the recent cloud services market investigation by the CMA [1].

Which highlighted "Egress fees harm competition by creating barriers to switching and multi-cloud leading to cloud service providers entrenching their position" [2].

It's also interesting that they are calling out problems with software licensing, as that is another thing the CMA is investigating in their cloud market review.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/cloud-services-market-investiga...

[2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/652e958b69726...

Re: Removing data transfer fees when moving off Google Cloud

#13

Post by diggan »

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #2

That's a cool thing for them to do, an interesting business choice, but cool. It certainly helps the companies feel a little better about vendor lock-in, which is terribly plentiful in the cloud. The TLDR is that when you tell them you want to cancel, you have 60 days to do so and during that time you'll have no egress fees. Makes sense. Biggest problem though is... if you have a substantial amount of data or need to…

> I would have to be on the DevOps team that's told to move a complicated and data-heavy application, and they only had 60 days to do so. Also the bulk of the data movement is, in my experience, one of the first steps of migration - not the last.

Couldn't you wait to tell Google until you've more or less figured out the logistics, then tell Google that you're leaving, fees for egress gets disabled and you initiate the move. Then you have 60 days to complete the move.

But yeah, if the move takes 30 days because you have a ton of data, and you figure out after the move is complete, that you missed 10%, you only have 30 days to figure out how to get that out too.

Re: Removing data transfer fees when moving off Google Cloud

#14

Post by skywhopper »

At face value this is a good thing, but I gotta say it’s pretty rich for Google to try to diss other cloud vendors for leveraging their effective monopolies given its moves in search and now browsers. Sorry, but GCP doesn’t get a pass on Google’s other behavior just because currently a loser in the cloud infra market.

Re: Removing data transfer fees when moving off Google Cloud

#16

Post by jiveturkey »

jdon wrote: post #12

Looks like it's a response to the recent cloud services market investigation by the CMA [1]. Which highlighted "Egress fees harm competition by creating barriers to switching and multi-cloud leading to cloud service providers entrenching their position" [2]. It's also interesting that they are calling out problems with software licensing, as that is another thing the CMA is investigating in their cloud market review.…

I don't see it that way at all. Those egregious egress charges still apply while you are actively using GCP, encouraging you to put everything in GCP, and eschew multicloud.

This seems to me more of a "try us out for free" play. Bring your big data here, if you end up not liking it, we won't penalize you for taking your data out. Given that GCP is running at a very distant 3rd, they need to make plays like this.

Re: Removing data transfer fees when moving off Google Cloud

#17

Post by kentonv »

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #2

That's a cool thing for them to do, an interesting business choice, but cool. It certainly helps the companies feel a little better about vendor lock-in, which is terribly plentiful in the cloud. The TLDR is that when you tell them you want to cancel, you have 60 days to do so and during that time you'll have no egress fees. Makes sense. Biggest problem though is... if you have a substantial amount of data or need to…

Sounds like they're trying to technically address EU regulators' concerns without providing any real value to customers.

In real life it's probably extremely unusual for any company to altogether cancel their Google Cloud contract. More likely is the scenario where you move the bulk of your cloud usage to a new provider, but still have various straggler infrastructure on the old one, which is not worth the effort to clean up. Or, you go to a multi-cloud strategy so you want to move half your data off Google but keep the other half around. Google's egress fees are still standing in the way of these cases.

Re: Removing data transfer fees when moving off Google Cloud

#18

Post by blibble »

jdon wrote: post #12

Looks like it's a response to the recent cloud services market investigation by the CMA [1]. Which highlighted "Egress fees harm competition by creating barriers to switching and multi-cloud leading to cloud service providers entrenching their position" [2]. It's also interesting that they are calling out problems with software licensing, as that is another thing the CMA is investigating in their cloud market review.…

I read through a couple of these responses to the CMA by MS, Google and AWS and their smaller competitors

as expected the hyperscalers refuse to acknowledge that the free ingress and expensive egress is a lock-in mechanism, and their smaller competitors complain bitterly about this

the hyperscalers say they have to charge egress fees to pay for the costs in building their networks, but for some reason doesn't apply to ingress (which they're silent on)

if they want to play this game then the CMA should simply make them charge the same for ingress and egress

that way they can "fund their network costs" without issue, and if they want to make them both free then that's their decision

Re: Removing data transfer fees when moving off Google Cloud

#19

Post by thrtythreeforty »

kentonv wrote: post #17
ShakataGaNai wrote: post #2

That's a cool thing for them to do, an interesting business choice, but cool. It certainly helps the companies feel a little better about vendor lock-in, which is terribly plentiful in the cloud. The TLDR is that when you tell them you want to cancel, you have 60 days to do so and during that time you'll have no egress fees. Makes sense. Biggest problem though is... if you have a substantial amount of data or need to…

Sounds like they're trying to technically address EU regulators' concerns without providing any real value to customers. In real life it's probably extremely unusual for any company to altogether cancel their Google Cloud contract. More likely is the scenario where you move the bulk of your cloud usage to a new provider, but still have various straggler infrastructure on the old one, which is not worth the effort to…

Yep, for a sufficiently large account, this strikes me as an offer they know will never be taken. "Migrating" typically means "stopping $XXX,XXX spend per month" not "completely ceasing use of all GCE services."

They know this and this is mainly marketing, I think.

Re: Removing data transfer fees when moving off Google Cloud

#20

Post by zinekeller »

SteveNuts wrote: post #10
loosescrews wrote: post #4

> Certain legacy providers leverage their on-premises software monopolies to create cloud monopolies, using restrictive licensing practices that lock in customers and warp competition. I like to see them publicly call out Microsoft and Oracle.

I think the "Legacy" and "licensing" portions are specifically calling out MS and Oracle, but they very sneakily are calling AWS out too on the fact that egress makes it insanely expensive to leave their platform. I've worked at some orgs where to either move their data out of S3 would cost $20k, or to even delete it would cost thousands in API calls.

You don't need the "I think" for Microsoft: while not mentioned directly, the links on "unfair legacy software" points to Microsoft.
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