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Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

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Re: Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

#61

Post by devoply »

ben_jones wrote: post #53
tuna-piano wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted this comment, because the general "Google shuts things down" narrative remains. Companies invested real money in integrating Google's existing services. If Google's New API is so easy to switch to, and companies will get value from the switch, then they would do it automatically. The truth is that the old API probably worked perfectly fine for some companies, who are now forced to spend time and money mig…

Despite generally disagreeing with the comment I upvoted the parent because I think it provides an important counterpoint to the discussion. I think it's too common to make lazy assumptions and not even read the article when it comes to a stereotype (true or not) such as Google's countless EOL'd services. And personally I feel like Google's endgame isn't to provide the best consumer/enterprise cloud services a la AWS…

But there are other options that are available for the customer is not really much of a counter point, as there are almost always other options available.

People dislike shutdowns because they have invested time and resources in implementing something. Now they have to spend the same if not more time again. This has a cost involved.

How much work is created in our cultures because of the disposable nature of everything. Businesses use efficiency as an excuse of squeeze every last dollar out of workers. Yet on the other end the system is exactly the opposite of efficient.

Re: Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

#62

Post by boulos »

This shutdown had an incredibly healthy discussion internally. The reality is that this service had been unmaintained for a long while, but we'd previously chosen not to start this deprecation process until we had a GA service we could actually have someone migrate to (Cloud ML Engine).

Additionally, it turns out that very few people were using it. That's not an excuse, but the reality of ongoing investment. I fought hard for this to be our expected 1 year term, and we had hoped to have a somewhat cookie cutter guide for "Here's how you reproduce this with TensorFlow". Quite frankly, the handful of users of the prediction API likely aren't the kind to happily port to TensorFlow (and this service has existed since the sort of App Engine only days, so they're mostly hobbyists, but I still care).

It's never great to "have to" turn down a service, but ultimately when forced between letting the code rot and become a potential security nightmare versus give the small set of users some time to retool, the decision was made to go with the latter. No new features is an easy way to keep something running forever, but keeping the damn thing secure requires a team to stay on top of it.

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.

Re: Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

#63

Post by djhworld »

soccerdave wrote: post #4

One thing that I find so amazing about AWS (Amazon Web Services) is that I'm not aware of them ever EOLing one of their apis (I could be wrong). We still have a bunch of code that still uses SimpleDB and even though they haven't promoted SDB for a while, they haven't EOLed it.

They still use it internally too, if you ever use ElasticMapReduce (EMR) then you'll probably see SimpleDB charges on your bill (very small amounts) because they use it under the hood to store cluster debugging information

Re: Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

#65

Post by neurotech1 »

vgt wrote: post #5

Before folks start comparing this to Reader or point to the general "Google shuts things down" narrative, Prediction API has been superset by the array of ML APIs and Google Cloud ML, found at [0]. [0] https://cloud.google.com/products/machine-learning/ (work at G)

Why can't Google offer an open source bridge/solution for easy migration of deprecated APIs?

Re: Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

#66

Post by neurotech1 »

skybrian wrote: post #37
themihai wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, and we should all be happy when we are forced to migrate to new APIs...like the old APIs got rust. This's one of the reasons why proprietary "cloud" services are so bad. Once they are gone you have little or no choice. Nobody would complain much if Google would shut down its MySQL "cloud" service. Amazon is just there and if Amazon doesn't fit the bill you can use a old good metal server. Not the same you can s…

Tensorflow is open source and apparently very popular, so I'm guessing this migration would be moving in the direction of less lock-in.

When will Google open source the Tensor Processing Unit, or something similar for FPGA accelerated TensorFlow?

Re: Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

#67

Post by zitterbewegung »

vgt wrote: post #5

Before folks start comparing this to Reader or point to the general "Google shuts things down" narrative, Prediction API has been superset by the array of ML APIs and Google Cloud ML, found at [0]. [0] https://cloud.google.com/products/machine-learning/ (work at G)

To alleviate the pattern of shutting down systems maybe you should fix your design process for services. Instead of having a healthy discussion when a service will be EOL you should ask a different question . Is this service going to be able to be able to be supported in the long run ?

Maybe APIs should have standard ways of accessing the information so that transisions can be seamless. Right now your API offerings make people distrust how long you will support any API.

I have had long healthy discussions about using google APIs but it's becoming harder and harder to advocate your products (which are great) when everyone perceives that you will shut things down.

Re: Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

#68

Post by gumby »

vgt wrote: post #5

Before folks start comparing this to Reader or point to the general "Google shuts things down" narrative, Prediction API has been superset by the array of ML APIs and Google Cloud ML, found at [0]. [0] https://cloud.google.com/products/machine-learning/ (work at G)

If it's so simple why not support the old API in the new systems? This just reminds us all of one of the costs of trying to depend on Google.

Re: Google Cloud Prediction API End of Life

#70

Post by tuna-piano »

boulos wrote: post #62

This shutdown had an incredibly healthy discussion internally. The reality is that this service had been unmaintained for a long while, but we'd previously chosen not to start this deprecation process until we had a GA service we could actually have someone migrate to (Cloud ML Engine). Additionally, it turns out that very few people were using it. That's not an excuse, but the reality of ongoing investment. I fought…

How much does Google Cloud spend on marketing and sales of its services, how much business do they lose from companies who believe that Google could shut down their services in a few years? How much would they have spent on maintaining this service?

I can tell you, from my experience at mid-market size non-tech clients looking to move to the cloud, that Google's reputation for shutting down services is known and is a negative. AWS' reputation for leaving services alive is also known, and is a positive.

When companies buy software, they don't want to have to worry about the future- they just want it to work.

"No one ever got fired for buying IBM" was a big driving force for IBM's success. "No one ever got fired for choosing AWS" seems to be true these days.

If you want that phrase to be "No one ever got fired for choosing Google Cloud"- you probably shouldn't deprecate services like that. I wonder if anyone got fired for choosing Google Cloud, after Google shuts down one of their services?

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