Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I think GCP is better than AWS (2020)

nandovillalba.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 409 posts

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

#241

Post by gumby »

rapind wrote: post #238
cameronh90 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> conflation of free Gmail/etc. consumer products with GCP. * Google Domains * Google Cloud IoT Core * Jamboard Also they increased Google Maps pricing by like 10x at one point, and they increased Cloud Storage prices pretty substantially last year too. Price increases can be just as impactful as killing a product. I don't think AWS has ever increased any prices or shut down any service (though quite a few are essent…

Google search appliance.

That one was such a long time ago when they were struggling to find PMF. I do my best to avoid Google bc I don’t trust them or their quality, but I think I’d give them a pass on the search appliance.

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

#242

Post by wg0 »

andrewmutz wrote: post #240
wg0 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS is stable. In that, the DX is predictable. I'm using AWS for over a decade and had huge gaps in between but coming back never was shocked or surprised by things totally reshuffled. On GCP, not the same. The GCP console of around 2012 if memory serves me well, is barely recognizable. That just the UX and I'm sure APIs would have changed as well in the meantime. The hip product management culture of Google is beyon…

I've never had a problem getting meetings with GCP reps for both big company spend and tiny startup spend. If anything, they have been too eager to talk when I had nothing to discuss with them.

Good to know that. I might be wrong on that account.

But my complain about product stability and maturity remains and that's admittedly is subjective.

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

#243

Post by danielmarkbruce »

mvdtnz wrote: post #223
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a reason contracts, contract law and the court system all exist. Most people and companies don't do things which aren't in their interest after stating they will. It isn't a Google thing.

No one is saying Google has broken contracts or the law. What is it with you Google defenders and your constant goalpost shifting? We are saying, Google is not to be trusted with claims like "we are committed to this product" because they have been caught in that lie several times before. Why are you going on about contract law and "most people and companies"? What you're saying is irrelevant.

The point is: don't expect companies or people to act against their interests. They generally haven't, don't and won't. Google isn't unique here. The problem is so pervasive in society that humans created contracts and courts to force people/companies to do things they wouldn't otherwise do.

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

#244

Post by djbusby »

notyourwork wrote: post #216
djbusby wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I've got associates at less than that (10-20k/mo) that have access to real people. One associate just crossed the $1k/mo mark and their human contact-ability improved. My GCP spend is <$500/mo - I don't get shit.

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.

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

#245

Post by archgoon »

VincentEvans wrote: post #237

Ah, the time has come for me to do another rant about Amazon - Open amazon app on your phone - Type in “craftsman firepit spark screen” into search and get results - Is the top result a craftsman product? No. Why? Who knows. But it’s ok, it’s like the third one down, though this is already hinting on the things to come. - Open up product details for the Craftsman one. It’s called, and make a mental note here “CRAFTSM…

[dead]

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

#246

Post by Eridrus »

878654Tom wrote: post #231
Eridrus wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 5% chance of needing to do a migration in 10 years is very small in comparison to other technical risks. And lets be clear, this is not a catastrophic risk; your contract with GCP guarantees they will not discontinue services without 12 months of notice so you will have time to do an orderly migration unless Alphabet itself goes under. I am a GCP user; I have found their offering (actually having GPU quota) signifi…

12 months notice is too short for big non-tech enterprises. They plan their infrastructure needs in 5-year terms. Changing to a new environment takes re-educating a lot of people, going through a lot of legal and audit meetings, finding enough manpower to do the transfer, putting things on hold purely for the migration,... 12 months is the time for the contracts to settle between these enterprises and cloud-vendors.

If your company is that big and unwieldy that a tiny chance of needing to do a migration in 12 months is unacceptable, you can stick to the key services which offer 36 months of notice. For all I know at that point you can negotiate your own guarantee if you're so big.

If you work at a company that can't do a cloud infra migration in 36 months, I don't have any good advice for you, but I doubt most commenters on here fall into that bucket. Frankly, I would expect companies that large to be in all the clouds so that you could negotiate them against each other, but I doubt that impacts many people here, and the chance of any of these worst case scenarios happening is vanishingly small.

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

#247

Post by gopher_space »

ajross wrote: post #104
DoctorOW wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally the phrase is "High risk, high reward." This would be considered a relatively low reward.

Nonetheless the chances of a median HN poster's employer being shived by a rogue Angel or dying to a founder feud are vastly (like, vastly vastly) higher than having Google drop one of their dependencies. And I guess I'd expect the discourse to reflect that. But instead it's the boring tech giant (yes, also my employer, though I work nowhere near cloud) who everyone seems to think is the existential threat? Like I sa…

It's not that the likelihood is high, it's that it happens at all. It's a worry I won't have if I'm doing business with other vendors.

I want to predict behavior and Google has always been a little too hermetic and occult for my taste.

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

#248

Post by silverlyra »

mythz wrote: post #230
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…

Getting rid of https://domains.google is a good indication that nothing is off-limits and everything is a bean counter report away from being abandoned. What's worse is that their loss-leading free products kill competing products before they finally abandon it themselves, leaving the space much worse than if they had ever entered it. No chance I'll ever vender lock myself to GCP.

This really resonates with me – yeah, the supposed API-driven engineering company, makes it no longer possible to automatically provision domain names for its "valuable" cloud computing customers?

What possible end could that serve? I am baffled by the idea that succeeding via open access to their infrastructure is not a serious long-term goal for Google.

For a company who ostensibly is existentially interested in developing at least one meaningful complement to it advertising business, of all the things https://killedbygoogle.com/ over the years, why the domain registrar? The cost to developer trust vs. the cost of ongoing operations – did they not even have that conversation?

Now I imagine how I would've felt to have my registration transferred to – I can't even recall who bought their customers – and I try to imagine putting faith in trusting GCP products with a startup idea, where ostensibly their second-mover advantage could let me move faster in greenfield development ... and I throw my hands up. This is a company acting like it places no value on goodwill, not even from a bare bean counter perspective.

I guess I'll stick to AWS (and more bespoke cloud offerings).

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

#249

Post by jb_gericke »

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…

We had our main GCP account suspended because we were running a Lightning node, and some Google automata flagged us as mining.

We couldn’t get hold of any actual person at Google, and were told by our Google reseller to buy a fairly expensive support package to have our issue expedited after raising multiple appeals/objections. Suffice it to say, we run out of AWS now. I’ve heard GCP support (in terms of reaching an actual human support person/engineer has only gotten worse since then, and our experience occurred a good few years back).

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

#250

Post by white_dragon88 »

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.

"Internal folks" who gives a rats ass about what they think? A company's reputation has little to do with how people on the inside perceive it, its actions and track record do the talking.

Stadia was a classic reason I couldn't trust GCP or any Google product aside from Gmail cause I've been using it so long, because unlike you I'm NOT in the know, I just see a bunch of stuff spun out, hyped (calling it 'little stuff' is a highly subjective assertion) and axed without warning. And I won't mention what an absolute mess the android development journey has been, a related symptom of a haphazard, disorganized product strategy. These things are uniquely Google, and it's a terrible look.

Post reply on HN