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How Diane Greene Transformed Google's Cloud

businessinsider.com

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Re: How Diane Greene Transformed Google's Cloud

#71

Post by kyrra »

willvarfar wrote: post #40
SystemOut wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you're saying you think that Google doesn't use Docs, Sheets, etc inside of Google but that is the entire opposite of what is happening. Anything that you'd normally do in Office is done on Google for Work at Google. There really isn't any other option available. Disclosure: I work at Google

I pity you all. You are forced to use it, but seemingly nobody is allowed to improve it. I too use it daily as my employer is a google apps customer. Which is why I am so frustrated and really need to vent about how featureless it is, and especially about how its improvement trajectory is so flat.

It's probably just targeting a different feature set than you need. Personally Sheets does what I need a majority of the time. Many of the google office-like products support Apps Script[0] as well so you can build on it a bit (hence all the 3rd party addons).

You also mentioned animations and transitions for slides. Personally I like the minimalistic use of slides (it should be background to what you're actually talking about, not taking center-stage). But that's the developer in me, and I'm sure lots of business-like people out there prefer the pretty and animations.

[0] https://developers.google.com/apps-script/

Re: How Diane Greene Transformed Google's Cloud

#72

Post by callmeal »

phonon wrote: post #48
zaroth wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but... At her tax bracket and future earning potential, the money is very likely to be worth more as a donation than as income. Total tax rate would be above 50%, but as a donation you get a $1-for-$1 deduction against future income. So the choice is something like 'keep 40 cents on the dollar today, or negate 60 cents on the dollar in taxes tomorrow.' Also, the money isn't really all gone to a 3rd party, it's i…

That doesn't make any sense. The deduction is in the same amount of the income she just received (I assume her basis (since she was a founder) was very low or near zero). It will not be available for "future income". The foundation-type entity is correct though, she will still be overseeing how it's spent.

Charitable contribution deductions are limited to 20-50% of income (depending on type of charity you are donating to).

You can "carryover" deductions from charitable contributions that you are not able to use up in the current year for up to 5-15 years.

https://www.taxslayer.com/support/530/charitable-contributio...

Re: How Diane Greene Transformed Google's Cloud

#73

Post by poooogles »

harshal wrote: post #52
boulos wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, our Taiwan region (asia-east1) is too far? We've had a number of customers from India, and thanks to our points-of-presence throughout the world it's not so simple as "AWS is in Singapore, Google is in Taiwan". That said, we hear you, and you can imagine we've done a lot of asking customers (and losing deals!) on the basis of where we are and where we could be. Disclosure: I work on Compute Engine.

Yes, Taiwan is too far. I personally know of an adtech startup that is going through contortions because they need to stay below latency limits on specific ad exchanges and those exchanges are located in Singapore. Taiwan is certainly way to far for them. There are other instances where I think additional ~50ms latency diff to from India to Taiwan matters much less and I am dubious if it is material. But what matters…

We're squeezing by in Taiwan just about, if anything changes networking wise though we're going to have to diversify to more providers.

If you're struggling to respond within 50ms anyway then you're going to have a bad time with the added latency. Thankfully our 95th percentile is around 20ms.

We are however having to go into AWS for Aus/NZ which is a pain.

Re: How Diane Greene Transformed Google's Cloud

#74

Post by crucifiction »

bogomipz wrote: post #17

How exactly did she "transform" it if they were number 3 before and are number 3 now?

She has transformed its ability to get PR pieces printed in a variety of news websites and get those links into HN. She has also transformed the amount of Google employees who respond on HN threads when GCE is brought up in any context. As far as the actual business, this PR piece seems to indicate the main transformation was adding in all of the "enterprise cruft" needed to be a real #3 player and not slip to #4.

Re: How Diane Greene Transformed Google's Cloud

#75

Post by manigandham »

boulos wrote: post #18
manigandham wrote: post #2

Interesting article. For anyone working with Google's Cloud Platform, there are definitely changes happening both in product and culture. As a company that's used all the major clouds and vendors out there (AWS, Azure, Softlayer, GCP, Internap), Google's has been the best so far with simple fast tech that works. They are clearly behind in features and breadth of offering but I agree with Diane's statements that the u…

Whom would you like to reach? (sounds like PMs and/or engineers). I'd consider it okay that you ping me and I route your issues to the relevant folks (there's always going to be routing), but for existing customers most questions naturally should go through support (either directly or via requests from Sales when a customer contacts them). Are you an active customer who is having trouble reaching us? Or a prospective…

Perhaps I should restate: I can reach most people via forums/social (although ignored plenty of times including the main startup guy) but the conversations and the platform just seem informal as if this entire thing is a side project (I know it's not).

We're a paying customer and I understand tiered support is available (as it is with every vendor) but there's a distinct difference in on-boarding, which is even more important and has to happen before we're a stable long-term client with a support contract. GCP is very barren in on-boarding resources and opaque in happenings. Here are some of my recommendations:

- The APIs (which are quite literally how applications connect to the platform) need a lot of work. I know there are idiomatic versions in progress but this has to be improved rapidly, like yesterday. They just don't seem production ready (they're even called alpha). I don't want to dig around github, I just expect to use them in whatever major language I'm writing.

- Documentation has recently gotten much better (good job!) but was terrible for a long time and is still confusing in parts. Add more solution/use-case oriented writeups. This is often the best way to understand how to use a new service rather than wondering how to make it best fit our app.

- Send an email as soon as an account is spending more than $1k/mth and see what they're doing and how you can help. Don't mention anything about buying a support plan or offer it free for the first quarter until everything is setup. The money is far outweighed by the goodwill.

- Properly staff the startups department so they can vet companies instead of outsourcing this to VCs/Accelerators. Right now you're turning away many companies that are bootstrapped or have other needs and are actually focused on building sustainable/profitable companies - the ones that will become long-term paying clients for you.

- Put out a roadmap with more detail or let companies take part in planning the next features. There seems to be only vague indications of what's coming up in the future.

Formality, reliability, assurance and easy access are critical, especially when you're asking companies to build on you as a foundation. The basics of computing are becoming commoditized so it's important that the services and service are able to differentiate.

I get the sense that the GCP team is aware of all this though so good luck, we all want a great platform and I can't wait to see what's in store.

Re: How Diane Greene Transformed Google's Cloud

#76

Post by p0rkbelly »

Not to get into a technical discussion of the merits between the two. But, I don't get the excitement around Diane Greene? Wasn't she asleep at the wheel at VMWare when AWS/MS were building out their cloud offerings? Seems like a major blunder and sitting on your laurels.

Re: How Diane Greene Transformed Google's Cloud

#77

Post by aiiane »

deafcalculus wrote: post #49

The one thing I've found baffling about both AWS and GCE is the bandwidth pricing. At about 0.1$/GB, it's 10x more expensive than competitors like linode. Why is that? Bandwidth cost is the primary reason I'm afraid of hosting side projects on AWS/GCE.

Because Linode and similar overcommit their bandwidth given that they're charging a package deal - most people won't actually use the full allocated bandwidth.

AWS/GCE charge for actual bandwidth usage, which means that everyone uses exactly what they pay for, and the folks who use less bandwidth don't subsidize the folks who use more.

Re: How Diane Greene Transformed Google's Cloud

#78

Post by manigandham »

bogomipz wrote: post #69
bogomipz wrote: post #17

How exactly did she "transform" it if they were number 3 before and are number 3 now?

Really? Down-voted for asking a legitimate question related to the article? Why? HN is becoming a bit silly with this isn't it?

I think it's because you severely limited the perception to a basic ranking. It's a massive undertaking to actually move up against AWS or Azure considering the incredible scale of these platforms so continuing to be #3 in customers is not really an accurate measure of progress.

The article is pretty clear on what's she's done so far. There's no denying that they have a lot of work to do but if you're actively using the platform then you'll notice that there has been a lot of change in just a few months with them, which should all help to increase that customer number.

Re: How Diane Greene Transformed Google's Cloud

#79

Post by 2pointsomone »

zaroth wrote: post #43
2pointsomone wrote: post #15

Wow I did not know she gave her $150m on the sale of Bebop to charity. That is very very impressive and must be celebrated more.

Yes, but... At her tax bracket and future earning potential, the money is very likely to be worth more as a donation than as income. Total tax rate would be above 50%, but as a donation you get a $1-for-$1 deduction against future income. So the choice is something like 'keep 40 cents on the dollar today, or negate 60 cents on the dollar in taxes tomorrow.' Also, the money isn't really all gone to a 3rd party, it's i…

Point taken (after the correction; I run a nonprofit so yes, you aren't entirely correct), but it is still forgoing a sizable income, and that is admirable.

Re: How Diane Greene Transformed Google's Cloud

#80

Post by gburt »

boulos wrote: post #18
manigandham wrote: post #2

Interesting article. For anyone working with Google's Cloud Platform, there are definitely changes happening both in product and culture. As a company that's used all the major clouds and vendors out there (AWS, Azure, Softlayer, GCP, Internap), Google's has been the best so far with simple fast tech that works. They are clearly behind in features and breadth of offering but I agree with Diane's statements that the u…

Whom would you like to reach? (sounds like PMs and/or engineers). I'd consider it okay that you ping me and I route your issues to the relevant folks (there's always going to be routing), but for existing customers most questions naturally should go through support (either directly or via requests from Sales when a customer contacts them). Are you an active customer who is having trouble reaching us? Or a prospective…

You should put an email address in your profile if you're serious about acting as routing service for "lost" GC support.
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