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Google Compute Engine: Expanded availability, new features, and lower prices

googledevelopers.blogspot.com

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Re: Google Compute Engine: Expanded availability, new features, and lower prices

#31

Post by onemorepassword »

declan wrote: post #10
icey wrote: post #3

After being bitten a few times by Google unceremoniously shutting down services, it feels like unnecessary risk-taking to build software on their infrastructure.

When has Google shut down a paid service that was popular and under heavy development like GCE and GAE? They may have, I admit, but I can't think of any. The point is raising the standard Google Reader/Google Buzz/etc. free examples isn't really apropos.

It doesn't have to be as dramatic as a complete shutdown. I bought into Google Apps for Business on the implicit promise it could one day completely replace desktop office apps.

All serious development has slowed down to a crawl. New developments are mostly cosmetic. Bugs never get fixed. Microsoft, miles behind not so long ago is now streets ahead with Office 365, and Google has quite clearly stopped giving a crap.

Google has never shown any interest in the long term pursuit of any product or service that couldn't be sufficiently exploited for advertising, directly or indirectly (collecting data to sell to advertisers), paid or unpaid.

Re: Google Compute Engine: Expanded availability, new features, and lower prices

#32

Post by wmf »

ww520 wrote: post #29
plorkyeran wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much the difference between free and paid that matters as whether or not the pricing is actually economically viable. The original GAE pricing pretty obviously wasn't, so it might as well have been a free product in that you were relying on Google continuing to want to subsidize it for whatever reason.

How do we as customers know whether a pricing posted by a company is viable or not? What is the criteria for viability? Someone didn't get his bonus because of growth not meeting target? Or the engineering budget has blown up passed expectation? It doesn't mean those will not happen again.

Supposedly all of Google's prices are now and will be viable since they introduced internal chargeback.

Re: Google Compute Engine: Expanded availability, new features, and lower prices

#33

Post by ww520 »

declan wrote: post #10
icey wrote: post #3

After being bitten a few times by Google unceremoniously shutting down services, it feels like unnecessary risk-taking to build software on their infrastructure.

When has Google shut down a paid service that was popular and under heavy development like GCE and GAE? They may have, I admit, but I can't think of any. The point is raising the standard Google Reader/Google Buzz/etc. free examples isn't really apropos.

They don't have to shut it down. They can raise price dramatically, like the Map API price hike, to drive people off. The thing is we don't know whether the current price is viable for Google or not, or whether it will stay viable tomorrow. It's just there are too many of these instances that people have lost trust. Once trust is lost, it's very difficult to earn it back.

Re: Google Compute Engine: Expanded availability, new features, and lower prices

#34

Post by icey »

declan wrote: post #10
icey wrote: post #3

After being bitten a few times by Google unceremoniously shutting down services, it feels like unnecessary risk-taking to build software on their infrastructure.

When has Google shut down a paid service that was popular and under heavy development like GCE and GAE? They may have, I admit, but I can't think of any. The point is raising the standard Google Reader/Google Buzz/etc. free examples isn't really apropos.

I suppose it wasn't very popular, or under heavy development, but I used Google Translate, and also was impacted when AppEngine went through the crazy price hikes.

Re: Google Compute Engine: Expanded availability, new features, and lower prices

#35

Post by espeed »

IheartApplesDix wrote: post #20
tonfa wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fastest (at least in term of terasort) hadoop platform?

Is that a question or a statement?

MapR breaks the Hadoop TeraSort world record using Google Compute Engine (https://plus.google.com/+GoogleDevelopers/posts/NURRXZ985XV)

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iQzMoy41_k

Re: Google Compute Engine: Expanded availability, new features, and lower prices

#37

Post by wmf »

dagw wrote: post #36

I'm seeing lots of numbers here of throughput, latency and IO, all of which are great, but does anyone have any experience with cpu performance. Will a GCE High CPU machine beat an EC2 high CPU machine in straight flops?

It's KVM on Sandy Bridge; effectively the same as EC2 cluster compute. http://blog.zencoder.com/2012/07/23/first-look-at-google-com...

Re: Google Compute Engine: Expanded availability, new features, and lower prices

#38

Post by gsharma »

declan wrote: post #10
icey wrote: post #3

After being bitten a few times by Google unceremoniously shutting down services, it feels like unnecessary risk-taking to build software on their infrastructure.

When has Google shut down a paid service that was popular and under heavy development like GCE and GAE? They may have, I admit, but I can't think of any. The point is raising the standard Google Reader/Google Buzz/etc. free examples isn't really apropos.

Google Answers is the only service I can think off. I don't think it was popular though.

Re: Google Compute Engine: Expanded availability, new features, and lower prices

#39

Post by rattray »

gwern wrote: post #16
declan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When has Google shut down a paid service that was popular and under heavy development like GCE and GAE? They may have, I admit, but I can't think of any. The point is raising the standard Google Reader/Google Buzz/etc. free examples isn't really apropos.

> When has Google shut down a paid service that was popular and under heavy development like GCE and GAE? As far as I know, never. I've been compiling a list of live and shut down services/products/etc (~299 so far), and while payment doesn't seem to be an important factor (plenty of shut down paid things, including many more advertising services than I expected), I cannot name a service which was under heavy develop…

This sounds very interesting -- is it public or can you make it public?

Re: Google Compute Engine: Expanded availability, new features, and lower prices

#40

Post by tbatterii »

OGinparadise wrote: post #17

These are paid services but before I'd jump in, Google would have to guarantee this service for say 5 years, with updates and no catch (like increasing the price by 5000% to force you out.) Microsoft is a lot of things, but one they do good is guaranteed, long term, support for their products. At least for the core ones. For example they are still supporting Windows XP, so when Coca Cola signs at the dotted line they…

My employer was on ae before the "big" price hike and after, and even to this day it is cheaper than the alternatives.

sure there was a couple of months of it being pricier nowhere near 5000% though.

Like when we ported to 2.7 from 2.5. Which was the biggest win in regards to reduction in cost AND latency.

another win was moving to ndb

and another win was offloading a lot of work to backends once they were introduced.

also, support is better than other vendors I've dealt with throughout the years including microsoft. An answer < 24 hours from someone who acts like they know whats going on is always appreciated.

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