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GCP arrives in India with launch of Mumbai region

cloudplatform.googleblog.com

41–50 of 73 posts

Re: GCP arrives in India with launch of Mumbai region

#41
post #38

> With the opening of this Mumbai region, Indian customers are now able to buy these services directly in Indian rupees. Somewhat related: I was forced to switch to GCP for hosting my static website because of lack of payment options. AWS doesn't allow you to prepay. The only way to settle your dues is using a credit card. My international debit card usually works everywhere but it didn't in case of AWS. I never felt…

I am always curious about why people don't use credit cards more. Would you please explain your reason?

I recently got my first card. Before that, I had tried applying for two but got rejected for some random reason. It's a pain to navigate through the banking bureaucracy, so I didn't try hard. Because debit cards worked fine always, even for International transactions, I never felt a strong need to get one.

Re: GCP arrives in India with launch of Mumbai region

#42
post #38

> With the opening of this Mumbai region, Indian customers are now able to buy these services directly in Indian rupees. Somewhat related: I was forced to switch to GCP for hosting my static website because of lack of payment options. AWS doesn't allow you to prepay. The only way to settle your dues is using a credit card. My international debit card usually works everywhere but it didn't in case of AWS. I never felt…

I am always curious about why people don't use credit cards more. Would you please explain your reason?

Credit cards are much less used outside of the US (one of the reasons is that the US banking system is Jurassic, but only one of the reasons)

Other reasons is limiting credit exposure/can't get credit for it

Debit cards work online in some places or you have a different way of paying

Re: GCP arrives in India with launch of Mumbai region

#43
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GCP and AWS do not use 6 people per region. With AWS a region has more than one availability zone. aws ec2 describe-availability-zones --region ap-south-1 for example shows two datacenters in mumbai. Across physical site security, to power to network to just hard drive and system decommissioning, more than 6 staff. I wonder if this is partly why AWS has done so well. I've used colo and hosted providers who do seem to…

Maybe double that number, or triple it. The point stands that you don’t need a large pool of local talent to operate a data center.

The Google data center in Hamina, Finland, statedly employs about 300. It's a mix of technical, security, catering and cleaning/facilities. Source (in Finnish): http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/google-ei-aio-laajentaa-da...

Re: GCP arrives in India with launch of Mumbai region

#44

> With the opening of this Mumbai region, Indian customers are now able to buy these services directly in Indian rupees. Somewhat related: I was forced to switch to GCP for hosting my static website because of lack of payment options. AWS doesn't allow you to prepay. The only way to settle your dues is using a credit card. My international debit card usually works everywhere but it didn't in case of AWS. I never felt…

"I never felt the need to get a credit card" IMO, credit cards are less damaging to you in case of misuse. If your debit card is stolen or its details are stolen from websites, you are at risk of losing your money directly from your bank account and recovering it may not be easy. You're at the mercy of the bank to compensate you, and most banks insist on formalities such as filing a police complaint. Good luck with t…

You just tie the debit card to an account where you limit the money available. Even if they steal it, they can only use N currency.

Re: GCP arrives in India with launch of Mumbai region

#45
post #38

> With the opening of this Mumbai region, Indian customers are now able to buy these services directly in Indian rupees. Somewhat related: I was forced to switch to GCP for hosting my static website because of lack of payment options. AWS doesn't allow you to prepay. The only way to settle your dues is using a credit card. My international debit card usually works everywhere but it didn't in case of AWS. I never felt…

I am always curious about why people don't use credit cards more. Would you please explain your reason?

China is almost credit card free now, except for things like pre-auth at hotels. People use apps like alipay or wechat to pay everything. They have the following advantages:

* Easy to use, you always carry your phone.

* Never expire.

* Password protected, card number and CVV are fragile.

* Works without a POS. Basically in China QR-codes on paper are everywhere.

* Online payment is super easy, you won't need to type billing addresses, etc.

Re: GCP arrives in India with launch of Mumbai region

#46
post #38

> With the opening of this Mumbai region, Indian customers are now able to buy these services directly in Indian rupees. Somewhat related: I was forced to switch to GCP for hosting my static website because of lack of payment options. AWS doesn't allow you to prepay. The only way to settle your dues is using a credit card. My international debit card usually works everywhere but it didn't in case of AWS. I never felt…

I am always curious about why people don't use credit cards more. Would you please explain your reason?

1. It doesn't make any sense to allow yourself to risk spending more than you have

2. They're more prone to abuse: if somebody gets hold of the numbers on your card (whether by a leak or hack or by old-fashioned pickpocketing), no further PIN, password or 2FA token is required

3. The only use for them is online spending outside Europe, and even then the number of websites that require them is rapidly shrinking (PayPal can work with bank accounts, and Stripe now supports SEPA direct debit and local payment methods such as SOFORT (Germany), iDEAL (Netherlands) and Bancontact (Belgium))

4. They cost money (see point 3, people don't like paying for things they don't use)

Re: GCP arrives in India with launch of Mumbai region

#47

> With the opening of this Mumbai region, Indian customers are now able to buy these services directly in Indian rupees. Somewhat related: I was forced to switch to GCP for hosting my static website because of lack of payment options. AWS doesn't allow you to prepay. The only way to settle your dues is using a credit card. My international debit card usually works everywhere but it didn't in case of AWS. I never felt…

"I never felt the need to get a credit card" IMO, credit cards are less damaging to you in case of misuse. If your debit card is stolen or its details are stolen from websites, you are at risk of losing your money directly from your bank account and recovering it may not be easy. You're at the mercy of the bank to compensate you, and most banks insist on formalities such as filing a police complaint. Good luck with t…

A blanket statement like that isn't very useful without giving the country. Protection for the customer varies widely around the world; I trust that the Danish system would work out fine for me.

(Additionaly, if my debit card is stolen it's of limited use without my PIN.)

Re: GCP arrives in India with launch of Mumbai region

#48
post #19

This is amazing! I am really excited to see this happen from the big three. Amazon, Google and Azure.

I wish they did billing from an Indian entity with GST as well instead of hitting us with massive exchange rate issues

They all do. AWS & GCP customer here, billing is fully GST-compliant from day 1.

Re: GCP arrives in India with launch of Mumbai region

#50
post #31

$GOOG employees: any eta on the California region?

LA is on it's way. https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/

having spent considerable time in the Los Angeles datacenter market I am insanely curious where they're putting these 3 zones. I am guessing El Segundo/Hawthorne area, Wilshire Annex in downtown LA, and something in the Orange County area.
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