Live data from Hacker News

Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

theinformation.com

311–320 of 856 posts

Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#312
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things like Google Reader had healthy user bases when Google came for them in the night. I wonder if anyone in Google management ever looks back and regrets that decision? It's still always being brought up, even 6.5 years later.

I always see google reader talked about on hackernews, but has a comparable product not have been made by someone else yet?

Side note, I remember the next 5 or so most popular alternatives to Reader being overloaded for weeks after the shutdown.

Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#313
post #28

I'm astounded that they would seriously consider closing GCP after committing so much time, money, and effort into building it. Every time there's a GCP story on HN commenters say "I won't use it because Google can just pull the plug." I thought this opinion was silly as GCP is the #3 cloud provider in the world, not a free service like Reader. Guess I was wrong, nothing is safe. Google wants #1 or nothing at all.

GCP can seriously be #1 because their kubernetes platform and cloud platform is much better than other cloud providers I have used. I started off with their Google Cloud Engine (?) and Big Table they provided and even though it was not really pure Java, I loved it.

And then they pulled the plug on my accounts because some of my android apps had "likeness or similarity to other apps" which I have absolutely no idea what it meant. Then they pulled the plugs on my colleague's account because of equally vague reason.

It was time for me to give up GCP forever.

Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#314
post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is Google so clueless to let this leak? If you create a culture of intense internal competition, where identities are tied to subunits ( e.g. a product team) over the company, you incentivise leaks. Google's elitist, "product founder" driven culture, unmonitored by a detached leadership, almost guaranteed this sort of sniping and in-fighting.

Who is the internal competitor to Google Cloud?

anyone who will get money if Google Cloud doesn't, or anyone who doesn't like whoever is running Google Cloud or thinks that anyone associated with Google Cloud that pulls it off will be a competitor for the next raise in level etc. etc.

This is like corporate infighting for comedies set in the 50s really.

Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#315

> to pass Microsoft or Amazon—currently first and second, respectively Does that imply that Microsoft is first and Amazon is second? That is surprising to me.

Yes they goofed on that. They do correctly state marketshares later in the article (i.e AWS #1)

Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#316
post #15

I can't imagine a more damaging leak for Google Cloud. A company that's already notorious for abandoning projects now has a public date for when they'll abandon cloud. How could anyone in their right mind start building on GCP? They may as well shut it down today.

So much for the usefulness of my GCP Cloud Architect cert...

Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#319

The clock is ticking for Google Cloud. The Google unit, which sells computing services to big companies, is under pressure from top management to pass Microsoft or Amazon—currently first and second, respectively, in cloud market share—or risk losing funding. That should give any Enterprise thinking about going all in on GCP a warm and fuzzy. When I say how can you trust Google for your infrastructure seeing how they…

>When I say how can you trust Google for your infrastructure seeing how they abandon projects, the usual response I get is that they would never do that with their “Enterprise” offerings.

And that's when I talk about Google Enterprise Search.

Re: Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud

#320

I still lay claim that google is not hiring the talent that they think they are or claim to be. With such huge budgets and failed product after failed product one has to wonder what is the genesis of their failings. Having met countless arrogant but mediocre engineers that leave Google after four years, I will bring up the old algorithms only hiring nets bad employees with good memories.

I do think their engineers have likely slipped in quality over the years, but that's not the problem. The problem is their culture of product managers being rewarded for launching projects and nobody being rewarded for maintaining projects. They financially incentivize people to launch and kill projects. It sounds like a leadership problem, because only leadership can change the culture like that.

Probably a lot to do with this. Incentives are probably the strongest driver of behavior in a company, much stronger than any stated strategy.

If people are richly rewarded for launching new products, they'll optimize their work for launching new products, even when that product doesn't make sense, or when more business value could be created by supporting/enhancing an existing product.

For another example, Microsoft's dysfunction and infighting in the Ballmer era can be tied to stack ranking. If your success depends on your peers doing worse than you, you're incentivized to not cooperate at best, snipe and sabotage at worst.

Google absolutely has to change their internal incentives if they want to sustain success into the future. In the case of GCP they're gonna have to start figuring out how they can shift their culture to wooing and keeping enterprise customers. This leak, their culture, and their history is gonna make that a tall order.

Post reply on HN