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Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

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Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#271

Post by naasking »

Someone wrote: post #123
willismichael wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, sure it was bleeding edge. That's not the point. Bleeding edge doesn't mean that your support has to be completely broken like this.

I wouldn’t call that “completely broken”. You can argue it took too long, or that having to give that advice for the reason given is stupid, or that the customer didn’t want to get that advice, but in the example the customer managed to get through to customer support and got clear, actionable advice. I frequently read worse on HN about Google, where even reaching tech support can be ‘challenging”, and Apple, where a…

> I wouldn’t call that “completely broken”.

The intent of customer services is to retain a customer in the event of problems. "You should close your account" is therefore broken customer service.

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#272

Post by mooreds »

mooreds wrote: post #171
scarface74 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you have a really old account you can still use an instance outside of a VPC. I’ve never heard of any service that AWS has just outright abandoned.

I used to teach AWS courses and had the same experience. I haven't heard of any service that has been disabled for an existing account. Yes, you are strongly discouraged from using some services (simple db) by them hiding it. Yes, new accounts can't use certain services (ec2 classic). Yes, some old features cost more than newer better features (rrs s3). But I wasn't able to point to any AWS service that had been shut…

BTW, if someone can, would love to hear about it.

Also, to be fair, I don't know of any Google Cloud Service that has been shut down (as opposed to consumer facing Google services), but haven't been paying as much attention to that service.

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#273

Post by pkroll »

matt4077 wrote: post #113
lalos wrote: post #8

Microsoft will reap the rewards of supporting XP and Office for decades, that wins enterprise trust & goodwill, and clients will expect that from Azure. On the other hand, every month we have a new product/service of Google being deprecated (officially or by raising prices). Even if it's technically better, the most sane business decision from enterprise would be to bet on Microsoft for support reasons. Microsoft tal…

> every month we have a new product/service of Google being deprecated Indeed! Just ~~~last month~~~ 62 months ago they shut down Reader. (I see that you're hedging with the reference to Maps. But I'd love if this time, we wouldn't make a single event a 10-year talking point)

That one hurt, but "single event" is a little off. Check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon... (nearly a hundred in 12 years, is the answer to the question "how many then?")

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#274

Post by SyneRyder »

BonesJustice wrote: post #250
SyneRyder wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went with a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga. It hasn't arrived yet, so I can't directly compare, but I've tried the keyboard & trackpad in store & they feel about as good as my mid-2012 MacBook Pro. I chose the premium screen upgrade to HDR Dolby Digital 500 nits, 8th-Gen Core i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, touchscreen/pen & 3yr Next Day On-site Warranty was $1500 cheaper than a MacBook Pro with the same specs. The Thinkpad X1 h…

Nice. The touchpad on my 2013 MacBook Pro doesn’t click properly anymore, and I just don’t like the current line. I just bought a ThinkPad X1 Extreme (i7-8850H, 32GB, 1TB, 4K). I’ve been running elementary OS on it, and while it lacks many of the niceties of macOS (especially for owners of multiple Apple devices), it has a familiar and refined feel.

> I’ve been running elementary OS on it...

I'm not much of a Linux user, but I've been trying elementary OS 0.4.1 Loki via Parallels and like it a lot. Unfortunately elementary OS 5 Juno has been buggy for me (random black screens requiring a reboot), so I'm stuck on Loki for now.

I was tempted to put elementary OS on my 32-bit 2006 MacBook (the one that currently has Windows 10), but there isn't a 32-bit version of elementary OS anymore.

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#275

Post by jkaplowitz »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #177
jkaplowitz wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With different communication that's harder to misunderstand, it would have been possible for Google to get a much better trust and expectations outcome from exactly the same substantive price changes (at least for GAE and GCP if not Maps). I think we're mostly or entirely agreeing?

The cloud service price changes maybe. But I'm more focused on things like maps, and the services they shut down. They can make statements about which things have promises and which don't, but it still causes worry until there's a really good track record.

Yeah. I'm saying that Google Cloud Platform (which does not include Maps) has a good track record with respect to their generally available services, as does G Suite with respect to their core G Suite services. Hell, even G+ isn't going anywhere for G Suite accounts (the turndown is only for consumers).

To be clear I'm not pretending that they've shut down as few things as Amazon (looking at you SimpleDB), but within the product area and lifecycle categories I indicated, they've stayed within what is perfectly viable for lots of companies.

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#276

Post by tabtab »

willismichael wrote: post #117
tabtab wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was bleeding edge tech; that happens.

Well, sure it was bleeding edge. That's not the point. Bleeding edge doesn't mean that your support has to be completely broken like this.

History is that when one one uses bleeding edge; good support and/or reliability is relatively rare. Whether it must be that way or if it's just a bad industry habit can be debated. But, if one looks at the history of most very-new tech, it quite often is not reliable regardless of cause. Therefore, you should probably not assume the newest incarnation will not have this problem. I don't have any solid study, but watching the industry for many decades has shown me this pattern. Here is a common saying that I didn't invent: "Never buy version 1.0". (Wow, I got a -3 above. That hurts.)

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#277

Post by llampx »

matt4077 wrote: post #113
lalos wrote: post #8

Microsoft will reap the rewards of supporting XP and Office for decades, that wins enterprise trust & goodwill, and clients will expect that from Azure. On the other hand, every month we have a new product/service of Google being deprecated (officially or by raising prices). Even if it's technically better, the most sane business decision from enterprise would be to bet on Microsoft for support reasons. Microsoft tal…

> every month we have a new product/service of Google being deprecated Indeed! Just ~~~last month~~~ 62 months ago they shut down Reader. (I see that you're hedging with the reference to Maps. But I'd love if this time, we wouldn't make a single event a 10-year talking point)

Google Reader is like "the one that got away" because the landscape changed so fundamentally with it, that no other product could take its place.

If Google had killed Gmail we would still have Yahoo mail and Hotmail and what not. We would bitch and moan but life would go on. Reader was... different.

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#278

Post by MisterTea »

sfifs wrote: post #75
VikingCoder wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't even tell you how many connectivity and graphics technologies MS launched, I developed on, and then they abandoned. I struggle to understand why people think MS deserves enterprise trust & goodwill.

Because businesses fundamentally run on Outlook and Office and support for that has been pretty amazingly consistent. Yes I've seen SharePoints and Skydrives and OneDrives and Yammers but none of them are critical the way Office and Outlook are

You can also add Active Directory to that list. Stupid simple to setup, join machines and setup policies. Small businesses with tens of pc's are easily managed from a single domain controller and the licensing isn't that bad when you're revenue easily covers costs.

Oh, and Office 365 is a blessing. I never thought I'd actually like SaaS anything from Microsoft but it works really well Office. It's also much easier than selling a $6000+ purchase req for 15-20 new office licenses. Especially when the boss doesn't see why office 2003 is obsolete in 2011 if it "still works fine for me". ~$240 a month was an easy sell with "free" exchange email and upgrades. Yea small shops are fun to work at.

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#279

Post by BonesJustice »

stevehawk wrote: post #258
BonesJustice wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice. The touchpad on my 2013 MacBook Pro doesn’t click properly anymore, and I just don’t like the current line. I just bought a ThinkPad X1 Extreme (i7-8850H, 32GB, 1TB, 4K). I’ve been running elementary OS on it, and while it lacks many of the niceties of macOS (especially for owners of multiple Apple devices), it has a familiar and refined feel.

Have anymore thoughts on that? I'm looking to upgrade my old Thinkpad Yoga.

What do you want to know?

I'm pretty pleased with the X1E: it's not quite MBP-level thin, but it's still a great balance of power and portability. NotebookCheck has a review that's worth checking out.

elementary OS feels fast, familiar, and refined. It's not quite as fleshed out as other distros like Mint (or macOS itself, for that matter), but it's getting better with each release.

The 4K HiDPI screen on the X1E is vibrant. My biggest concern was that the HiDPI scaling on Linux wouldn't be up to snuff, but I've been pleasantly surprised. The scaling for GTK apps was perfect right out of the box. There were some extra steps to get Qt apps to scale properly and inherit the GTK theme, but they look great now. Wine and Steam basically just required checking a box to get the scaling to work.

Happy to answer any specific questions you have.

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#280

Post by wernercd »

slededit wrote: post #262
wernercd wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they could have emulated it What's the cost/benefit of that? How much would it cost to build it and how much could they make? You can theoretically do ANYTHING... but a business exists to make money... Why does Microsoft support 16bit? because - without a doubt - someone is paying them for that "extra" support.

When you make a business decision - don’t pretend it was a technical one. That’s why it’s a bullshit excuse.

"Technical" is part of the excuse... Don't pretend that the "only" reason a company chooses to not do something is "technical".

As I said... there are many reasons - and a company exists to make money.

If they decide not to do something that doesn't make them money? It's not a hard reason to see why...

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