Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google IoT Core will be discontinued on Aug. 16, 2023

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 173 posts

Re: Google IoT Core will be discontinued on Aug. 16, 2023

#71

Post by dekhn »

acdha wrote: post #65
dekhn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Cloud (VMs, blob storage, databases) bring in multiple billions of revenue a year from enterprise. The company invested billions in new data centers and transferred large parts of intenral technical infrastructure into cloud to build these products over a decade. If Google Cloud (VMs, blob storage, databases) shut down, not only will large # of enterprises howl (data gravity is huge), Google will absolutely ha…

There’s no doubt that they have invested a lot of money but that doesn’t guarantee returns and data centers have a fair amount of cost to keep running. The big thing I’d like is to have Google Cloud broken out as a separate business. While it’s true that shutting it down would harm them, I haven’t gotten the impression that their management are especially concerned. As an enterprise customer of both, AWS seems way mo…

I reward AWS with my business and tolerate GCP when necessary.

What's funny is there was a core of engineers back in 2009 who understood everything necessary to get the technical side of Cloud to be competitive with AWS, and mostly succeeded, but by then, it was clear that Google simply didn't know how to market to enterprises. The whole thing was a squandered opportunity and I simply did not understand at the time (2009-2011) just how unprepared Google's leadership was to expand beyond ads.

Re: Google IoT Core will be discontinued on Aug. 16, 2023

#72

Post by mort96 »

joezydeco wrote: post #51
mindcrime wrote: post #8

Google should just go ahead and shut down their entire Cloud business. I mean, nobody in their right mind would build a business or anything substantial on top of any Google provided service, and the hobbyist market can't be that big. Just go ahead and drop out Google, and quit fucking wasting everybody's time.

How is IoT a hobbyist business? I deployed a large restaurant equipment project on Azure backends and couldn't be happier. I've made a policy of not touching Google for anything embedded-related and it continues to pay off. I guess, yeah, anything non-AdWords related is a hobby. For Google .

They didn't say IoT is a hobbyist business. They said no serious company in their right mind would use a Google IoT product, so the only market they have is the hobbyists who aren't deterred by the fact that Google only keeps these services around for a couple of years before shutting down.

Re: Google IoT Core will be discontinued on Aug. 16, 2023

#73

Post by dekhn »

sink wrote: post #53
dekhn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Cloud (VMs, blob storage, databases) bring in multiple billions of revenue a year from enterprise. The company invested billions in new data centers and transferred large parts of intenral technical infrastructure into cloud to build these products over a decade. If Google Cloud (VMs, blob storage, databases) shut down, not only will large # of enterprises howl (data gravity is huge), Google will absolutely ha…

As a former head of engineering for a mid-sized IoT company with many tens of thousands of devices deployed in the field using a competing product (no, not the AWS one), seeing this made my stomach churn. This was my second biggest fear after waking up to a ransomware attack. It's hard to imagine anyone trusting Google for IoT again. I will certainly put them at the bottom of my list for any other infrastructure I de…

Had I started an IoT company, I would not have depended on any cloud IoT product. VMs, blob storage, containers, load balancers, hosted databases. But not anything labelled "IoT".

Re: Google IoT Core will be discontinued on Aug. 16, 2023

#74

Post by joezydeco »

mort96 wrote: post #72
joezydeco wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is IoT a hobbyist business? I deployed a large restaurant equipment project on Azure backends and couldn't be happier. I've made a policy of not touching Google for anything embedded-related and it continues to pay off. I guess, yeah, anything non-AdWords related is a hobby. For Google .

They didn't say IoT is a hobbyist business. They said no serious company in their right mind would use a Google IoT product, so the only market they have is the hobbyists who aren't deterred by the fact that Google only keeps these services around for a couple of years before shutting down.

Yeah, I misread that. Thanks.

Re: Google IoT Core will be discontinued on Aug. 16, 2023

#75

Post by dylan604 »

baybal2 wrote: post #16
StringyBob wrote: post #6

What devices are there in the field are reliant on the Google IoT Core Service platform? Are there ‘smart’ devices that are just going to stop working unless people rewrite the firmware for a different system like AWS or Azure IoT?

Exactly, everybody who bet on Google in IoT has just got a giant RMA bill. Same has happened when Azure changed its root cert, which was likelly hardcoded into 99% of deployed devices using it.

Do IoT devices not have a USB port to allow for updating of the firmware?

Re: Google IoT Core will be discontinued on Aug. 16, 2023

#76

Post by acdha »

dekhn wrote: post #71
acdha wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no doubt that they have invested a lot of money but that doesn’t guarantee returns and data centers have a fair amount of cost to keep running. The big thing I’d like is to have Google Cloud broken out as a separate business. While it’s true that shutting it down would harm them, I haven’t gotten the impression that their management are especially concerned. As an enterprise customer of both, AWS seems way mo…

I reward AWS with my business and tolerate GCP when necessary. What's funny is there was a core of engineers back in 2009 who understood everything necessary to get the technical side of Cloud to be competitive with AWS, and mostly succeeded, but by then, it was clear that Google simply didn't know how to market to enterprises. The whole thing was a squandered opportunity and I simply did not understand at the time (…

Strong agreement - I really think ads’ strength cost them multiple markets just because nobody was really worried about not being profitable. I’ve heard mixed things about working at AWS but everyone I know who’s worked there was keenly aware of whether customers liked what they worked on.

Re: Google IoT Core will be discontinued on Aug. 16, 2023

#77

Post by Androider »

If you haven't, please read the classic "Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy is Killing You" [1] by the always fantastic Steve Yegge (who used to work at Google). As he so succinctly put it, the email follows the standard Google GCP template:

Dear RECIPIENT,

Fuck yooooouuuuuuuu. Fuck you, fuck you, Fuck You. Drop whatever you are doing because it’s not important. What is important is OUR time. It’s costing us time and money to support our shit, and we’re tired of it, so we’re not going to support it anymore. So drop your fucking plans and go start digging through our shitty documentation, begging for scraps on forums, and oh by the way, our new shit is COMPLETELY different from the old shit, because well, we fucked that design up pretty bad, heh, but hey, that’s YOUR problem, not our problem.

We remain committed as always to ensuring everything you write will be unusable within 1 year.

Please go fuck yourself,

Google Cloud Platform

[1] https://steve-yegge.medium.com/dear-google-cloud-your-deprec...

Re: Google IoT Core will be discontinued on Aug. 16, 2023

#79

Post by doctor_eval »

wildfire wrote: post #67
psanford wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS doesn't do this. AWS keeps around old deprecated services that they aren't developing new features for, in perpetuity (e.g. SimpleDB). They might not launch that service into new regions, but they will keep it around in existing regions to not break customers who depend on it. This is a reflection of AWS being "customer obsessed" where Google is not.

If they were "customer obsessed" even though they are not doing development of a service, they would lauch it anyway in all regions. By not doing this, they make it hard for their customers to be multi-regional. It is easy to spin "customer obsession" any way you like.

That's the least generous, and least logical, possible take, and I'm the opposite of a fan of Amazon or AWS.

If a customer is not multi-region already, and if Amazon hasn't promised multi-region availability, then the customer has simply chosen the wrong product. It's not in anyone's interest for Amazon to waste resources rolling out a product that they can't sell, just because maybe someone wants to expand their existing use.

Re: Google IoT Core will be discontinued on Aug. 16, 2023

#80

Post by drusepth »

Animats wrote: post #22
mindcrime wrote: post #8

Google should just go ahead and shut down their entire Cloud business. I mean, nobody in their right mind would build a business or anything substantial on top of any Google provided service, and the hobbyist market can't be that big. Just go ahead and drop out Google, and quit fucking wasting everybody's time.

Yes. They already angered the game dev community, and few believe Stadia will stay around. This angers the industrial internet-of-things community. You can get Siemens industrial equipment tied to Google IoT Core. Hopefully you don't already have it installed. Industrial controls people think in terms of decades, not months. A Coursera class on Google IoT Core for industrial control started today. 77,000 people signe…

>few believe Stadia will stay around

I think the people that still think Stadia is gonna shut down any time soon are just the gamer blogs/communities that have been running shutdown rumor pieces every month or so for the last 3 years. (Most recently the killedbygoogle guy's "my friend heard on facebook that Stadia's shutting down..." post that went viral.)

Stadia's actively signing hardware deals with Samsung/LG and other smart TV manufacturers, and about to expand availability to even more countries. AFAICT most people that actually play on Stadia don't think it'll shut down any time soon.

Post reply on HN