Google Cloud Worth $225B, Deutsche Bank Says • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Cloud Worth $225B, Deutsche Bank Says

#91

Post by dnautics » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #65

askytb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That list is probably the exact list of google customers that get any real support from google

Anyone can get Google support with Google One [0] for as low as 2$ a month (along side 100GB of storage). The issue is people expect free products they haven't paid a penny for to have live customer support, which doesn't make much sense at the billion user scale. [0] https://one.google.com/

Have you ever interacted with Google support as a paying customer?

It's miserable in my experience.

Re: Google Cloud Worth $225B, Deutsche Bank Says

#92

Post by mrfredward » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

ifthenelseend wrote: post #33

sdan wrote: post #6

Not surprised. If AWS can't make their UI a bit more user-friendly (especially for beginners) and remove their AWS Educate for students (which by the way is horrible), I think a good chunk of developers and possible institutions might move over to GCP. Other that UI, I think GCP in some instances may be cheaper (pretty sure I saw some instances that were cheaper... although I can't say for sure).

UI is not that bad, but the product is very complicated for startups. For example, I can create a website on Azure with just a few clicks as a single item in my account. On AWS, (even if I use Beanstalk) I have to create VPC, load balancer, security groups, S3 bucket for code and a lot of other things... not easy to manage and takes a lot of time!

Setting things up in AWS is time consuming, but not as time consuming as debugging.The AWS documentation is huge and seems thorough, and yet never actually helps me solve any problems. There is always some obscure bit of configuration not covered in the tutorials and buried too deep in the docs to find that is needed to get anything past a hello world to work. Meanwhile, the errors in the log are too vague to make the solution googleable, and it takes days to figure out even the simplest things.

I've found the only way to make anything work in AWS is to search for hours and hours looking for the Stack Overflow question that tells you what the docs left out. And yet I stick with AWS because last time I tried Azure everything was broken. It'll be nice when this stuff gets a little more polished.

Re: Google Cloud Worth $225B, Deutsche Bank Says

#93

Post by rumanator » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

outside1234 wrote: post #56

sidcool wrote: post #48

How much are AWS and Azure worth?

More. A lot more. Azure is growing 20 points faster than GCP and from a much higher base too (and I will point out that it is in Microsoft's DNA to run this sort of business, unlike Google's).

Since when is the internet in Microsoft's DNA?

And isn't Azure's main feature the fact that they provide a service invented and developed by Google (kubernetes') and a first-class citizen in GCP?

Re: Google Cloud Worth $225B, Deutsche Bank Says

#94

Post by josho » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

VikingCoder wrote: post #77

lacker wrote: post #43

I was working at Google when AWS launched in 2006. The internal message was, we don't want to build a competitor. We have the technology to compete in this area, but it is fundamentally a low-margin business, whereas reinvesting in our core business is high-margin, so we should keep our infrastructure to ourselves. I wouldn't say the Google strategy was wrong per se - their stock has about 10x'd since then. But it's…

I would say the Google strategy was wrong. For every AWS API with significant adoption, Google should have implemented it. Make transitioning from AWS to GCE as simple as possible.

I don't follow you. Your suggestion just serves to turn this into a commodity low-margin business. What benefit does google have for doing that?

Re: Google Cloud Worth $225B, Deutsche Bank Says

#95

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

exacube wrote: post #76

lacker wrote: post #43

I was working at Google when AWS launched in 2006. The internal message was, we don't want to build a competitor. We have the technology to compete in this area, but it is fundamentally a low-margin business, whereas reinvesting in our core business is high-margin, so we should keep our infrastructure to ourselves. I wouldn't say the Google strategy was wrong per se - their stock has about 10x'd since then. But it's…

I feel they entered the business because they AWS showed the industry that it actually has pretty good margins. However, I think the sentiment is probably true that selling VPS is low-margin over the long-term, but i think the margins come from the other bits: global economies of scale, good infrastructure management & practices, and providing their proven internal technologies (ML/AI, managed distributed services).…

[deleted]

Re: Google Cloud Worth $225B, Deutsche Bank Says

#96

Post by electriclove » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

How much are their shares of SpaceX worth?

Re: Google Cloud Worth $225B, Deutsche Bank Says

#97

Post by radiowave » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

frostyj wrote: post #52

lacker wrote: post #43

I was working at Google when AWS launched in 2006. The internal message was, we don't want to build a competitor. We have the technology to compete in this area, but it is fundamentally a low-margin business, whereas reinvesting in our core business is high-margin, so we should keep our infrastructure to ourselves. I wouldn't say the Google strategy was wrong per se - their stock has about 10x'd since then. But it's…

I thought margin on the cloud business is pretty high...

There's more to being in a high-margin business than just putting your prices up and watching the money roll in. It depends (among other things) upon what you're selling. My sense is that what Google overlooked was the opportunity to add value.

Re: Google Cloud Worth $225B, Deutsche Bank Says

#98

Post by maktouch » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

whoisjuan wrote: post #51

maktouch wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In GCP, I çan see all my instances of all regions in one go. I can't do that with aws. In GCP, I can easily create networks between projects. It's really shitty to do in aws. In GCP, I can create a machine and everyone in my team automatically has ssh access. In GCP, I can make an instance, then mark the IP as reserved. In aws, I have to reserve the IP first. Aws UX is the worst. I use both on an everyday basis. I co…

It seems that you are talking about features. I never said that AWS UX isn't horrible. It is. But GCP is also pretty shitty. They don't deserve any praise in this area at all. They have useful features but that doesn't mean their UX is good.

Well, UX means user experience. If some little features give you a better experience to me, a user, isn't that a better UX?

They both have regions. One makes it easier to see at a glance.

They both have the concept of reserved IP, one doesn't need to be set first.

They both install ssh keys for you. One does it per user, the other per instance.

One sets up cross region VPC for you. The other one makes you suffer and do it yourself.

Re: Google Cloud Worth $225B, Deutsche Bank Says

#99

Post by always_late » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

whoisjuan wrote: post #36

sdan wrote: post #6

Not surprised. If AWS can't make their UI a bit more user-friendly (especially for beginners) and remove their AWS Educate for students (which by the way is horrible), I think a good chunk of developers and possible institutions might move over to GCP. Other that UI, I think GCP in some instances may be cheaper (pretty sure I saw some instances that were cheaper... although I can't say for sure).

Why people keep saying that GCP UI/UX is good. Is it because of Firebase? Because granted, that's a very nice UX. But when you log in to the GCP console that thing is a fucking mess. Way more complicated than AWS, with a very subpar UX... And don't get me started with their documentation. What a piece of crap. It's like nobody thought that things of this nature require a clear hierarchy. It's just a blob of concepts…

There seems to be a common problem here, is it possible for a startup to come in and improve things.

Re: Google Cloud Worth $225B, Deutsche Bank Says

#100

Post by joshuamorton » Fri, Oct 04, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

whoisjuan wrote: post #51

maktouch wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In GCP, I çan see all my instances of all regions in one go. I can't do that with aws. In GCP, I can easily create networks between projects. It's really shitty to do in aws. In GCP, I can create a machine and everyone in my team automatically has ssh access. In GCP, I can make an instance, then mark the IP as reserved. In aws, I have to reserve the IP first. Aws UX is the worst. I use both on an everyday basis. I co…

It seems that you are talking about features. I never said that AWS UX isn't horrible. It is. But GCP is also pretty shitty. They don't deserve any praise in this area at all. They have useful features but that doesn't mean their UX is good.

It seems like you're confusing UI and UX. My experience with either UI is almost nil, so I can't comment, but an ugly UI that streamlines common patterns and has sane and unsurprising defaults has good UX. As far as I know, you can accomplish all of the things GP mentioned with either AWS or GCP. Its just that doing so is much less confusing on GCP, hence better UX.