The most important products Google needs to launch are: Real Customer Service and Sensible Account Dispute Management.
Without these two I would not touch any of these services. They are, almost without a doubt, radioactive.
Why?
It's an old story, really: Get tangled with Google algo's for any reason and your account is suspended with no recourse. There goes everything: adsense, adwords, plus, gmail, drive, docs and whatever else was linked to that account.
No thanks. Make a real commitment to behave like a real business partner with me and my clients and you have a deal. Until then, thanks, but no, thanks.
Don't get me wrong, I would definitely like to use these services. I most definitely do. However, the risk of the totalitarian account suspension mechanism chopping your head off is just not worth my time.
Charge me $99 a year (think Apple). Put me through the vetting process that Apple puts you through when you register as a developer (company data, etc.). Get comfortable with the fact that I am a real business. Then, from that point forward, let's have a real business-to-business relationship as opposed to a totalitarian-government-to-insignificant-ant relationship. That's a winning formula.
I work for a company that uses Google's apps internally. We have less than 1000 users. We get sales and technical contacts at Google with real phone numbers and everything.
If you think there's a market for Google's products but with better customer service, you could form a startup reselling Google's products, with you providing customer service and escalating to Google whenever appropriate.
Customer service is not metric-able and has a high CPRD. Google will NEVER do what it takes. It's against six sigma. This against their operations team
A Question : Since Google has a bad track record with customer service, how much they have a chance to people trust them ?
They can be "google" and they can be good at infrastructure but i see "image transfer" is problematic here: i want to know that i can "speak" with someone when something went wrong , past experiences shows it's nearly impossible.
(When my account is locked ,i don't want to loose my servers, email, docs, im, storage and thereafter my job...)
We were using App Engine in 2010 for the image delivery part of our product. We had troubles scaling and one of their engineers e-mailed me personally, asked me for my code (if I am comfortable with it, of course), and helped me fix a couple of things.
Anymore customer service would result in Google writing my apps for me.
Google only believes in algorithms. With app engine they started charging me like $800/month after their price hikes. There was no way to speak with anyone. I basically sent an email from the link from the admin console only to get a lame reply the following week.
In contrast, at least in regards to other amazon services, their customer service is very high.
Amazon has experience providing customer service and are not ADD like google. When they do something, they stick with it and ensure success across the board.
After my experience with the Google App Engine, I will never trust google with anything else anymore, especially anything that is vital to my business.
i'm so sick of seeing this come up every time google introduces anything new. they have, at the very least, adequate customer service, as long as you're their customer. as a gmail user you aren't paying them any money and are therefore not a customer. If you pay for google apps, you get customer service. I'm sure that this product will include customer service at least on par with AWS (which, as far as i'm aware, is basically zilch).
you're not going to 'loose' any servers that you are paying for.
Hopefully this will result in serious price competition with AWS over time.
I also hope the various APIs of all these cloud-computing services (along with build-it-yourself alternatives like OpenStack) somehow coalesce or get meta-abstracted into a single API that works across all services -- akin to what Canonical is trying to accomplish with Project AWSOME[1] but across all major cloud environments. One can dream.
For competition, there are already other services backed by large companies: MS Azure added VMs recently, HP Cloud, IBM Smart Cloud, Rackspace obviously. And there are also many other providers. So competition is there already. You can compare prices with http://www.cloudorado.com/ and you may already find AWS is quite often not so cheap. So why Google is supposed to change the picture that much?
To add to the pile I'll give you a couple others that I know of. There's http://www.aeolusproject.org/ which is actually based off of Deltacloud which someone else already mentioned. It's basically a nice GUI/toolset for working with multiple clouds... and quietly backed by RedHat, so there is that.
There are of course also the application management tools like the recently announced CliQr and Rightscale. Both of those work with several different clouds (both private and public).
Can I launch an instance of Ubuntu from ubuntu.com without creating an account anywhere? Assume I just wanted to test out Desktop, or a Juju for something. (something like workspot.net was, but with stickiness through the cloud.)
There's no way it can compete with AWS at the prices they have. The cheapest option they have is
n1-standard-1-d - a single core at $0.145/hr = $105 per month (that's not counting any traffic or storage).
At that price I can get an absolutely kickass dedicated server from Hetzner with 32GB RAM, quad-core Xeon E3-1245, 6TB space, 6TB of disk space, unlimited traffic.
Pricing comparison: The smallest GCE instance (2.75 compute units, 3.75 GB) should be compared to the medium sized EC2 instance (2 units, 3.75GB memory).
That's $0.145/hr GCE vs. $0.16/hr EC2 vs. $0.077/hr EC2 (heavy reserved 1 yr full time), so the pricing is competitive with Amazon - especially given the extra 0.75 compute units.
The only unknown is whether the compute units are equivalent - the docs only say they are Sandy Bridge-based Intel CPUs.
It's more like extra 0.9-1.0 compute, since the prices aren't exactly equal. So that's indeed 50% more compute compared to Amazon, just like they said at the keynote.
You should try comparing cloud computing services with http://www.cloudorado.com/ . It calculates price for specified resources from multiple providers. And for CPU comparison based on the same benchmark across all providers, so it is using the same unit.
This is exactly what interests me. I keep 20 servers in colocation facility because I have I/O requirements that can't be reliably met with EBS. Solve that problem and I'll move as soon as my colo contract term expires.
I think people confuse cloud computing with giving money to cloud provider. You can give all your money to a cloud provider without having any benefits of cloud computing.
I find developing my app for cloud providers and learning their APIs, submitting bug reports when stuff doesn't work as expected, etc to be more work than opening an account with a data centre and renting hardware as needed. Each to their own.
Can you be more specific? I don't see it that way at all. I've "rented hardware" and provisioned AWS machines, and the broad experience is basically identical. There are "APIs" on both sides that do pretty much the same thing (though with the smaller hosting providers that API is often "call them on the phone" -- not an advantage, IMHO).
The differences are in scale (how many can you get and how fast -- cloud wins huge here), price (cloud hosting is more expensive over the long term) and granularity (bill by the hour vs. by the month).
You can provision a server on EC2 exactly the way you do a rented server. However, on EC2 you can image it after you have it provisioned so if you need to setup a new one, it's as simple as "make a new server with this image".
I see no way to say that it's more work on EC2. It may have worse performance, or cost more, but that is an entirely different argument.
On the other hand, having two very strong nearly-direct competitors in this area is bound to have a very positive (for customers) longer term pricing impact. For that reason, I hope they succeed with this.
Google is looking more and more like Microsoft, launching wave after wave of me-too products and services in what looks like an increasingly desperate effort to diversify its revenue stream. Where is the focus?
Every Google product exists to one end: Get more people looking at Google Ads.
Google ads are so pervasive that almost anything that gets people to be on the internet more is straight up beneficial to Google.
Search? Ads right there.
Gmail? Ads right there.
Youtube? Ads right there.
Google 411? Collect massive quantities of voice samples to train the systems that became Youtube's automatic subtitle system. More features on Youtube = more eyes on ads.
Android? Web browser in your pocket = ad delivery in your pocket. Then there's in app ads too. And then there's the invaluable data mining that makes the ads worth more to sellers by making them more effective.
Google+? Never leaving Facebook means never seeing a Google ad, action had to be taken.
Google+/Chrome/Currents for iOS? Get people on that other device looking at more ads too!
Self driving car? Can you imagine how many ads you could be looking at during the time you normally spend driving?!
"The economy of scale and efficiency of our data centers allows Google Compute Engine to give you 50% more compute for your money than with other leading cloud providers."
Is anyone getting 500 errors for the documentation? I am constantly getting these while all other sites open fine. Quite surprised to get 500 errors from Google.
I've got 3 of those errors in the last 2 days. The 500 error page seems poorly formatted when compared to their 404 page which suggests they'd be surprised about anyone getting 500 errors too!
Cost-wise how effective it is? Of all the services out there EC2 seems to be the cheapest with so many services. Its like mini swiss knife for cloud computing.
I wonder if the reason that they don't offer less powerful, cheaper machines is that Google itself does not use such machines; You aren't "scaling like Google" if you are not using the same types of machines as they use in their actual architecture.
Edit: You guys are right, obviously, they will almost certainly offer slower, cheaper machines at some point (even if this wasn't part of their original plan, there is a visible demand, which should motivate action). However, my real point is that I'm guessing that this initial roll-out does map more closely to what they use themselves than whatever their eventual full catalog of offerings looks like.
Regarding pricing is my assumption right:
The Google CPU equivalent is Sandy Bridge, which was released in 2011 onward. While Amazon's is 2007 Xeon equivalent.
Also their base memory is 3.75 GB, Amazon's small is 1.7GB.
So would it be ok to assume the Google n1-standard-1 equivalent would perform better than medium on AWS?
Google first need to convince their engineers as well as managements to deploy critical systems (hopefully not just support.google.com or some internal properties) to compute engine just like what Amazone does for EC2 (they powered amazon.com)
It's interesting to see how a lot of the discussions here are around costs. We've just added support for the Google Compute Engine and Cloud Storage to our cloud cost simulation software at http://www.ShopForCloud.com (http://blog.shopforcloud.com/2012/06/we-now-support-google-c...). Anyone can use our tool to estimate and forecast their costs across AWS, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace, and now, Google. We'd be happy to hear your feedback.
[+] [-] robomartin|13 years ago|reply
Without these two I would not touch any of these services. They are, almost without a doubt, radioactive.
Why?
It's an old story, really: Get tangled with Google algo's for any reason and your account is suspended with no recourse. There goes everything: adsense, adwords, plus, gmail, drive, docs and whatever else was linked to that account.
No thanks. Make a real commitment to behave like a real business partner with me and my clients and you have a deal. Until then, thanks, but no, thanks.
Don't get me wrong, I would definitely like to use these services. I most definitely do. However, the risk of the totalitarian account suspension mechanism chopping your head off is just not worth my time.
Charge me $99 a year (think Apple). Put me through the vetting process that Apple puts you through when you register as a developer (company data, etc.). Get comfortable with the fact that I am a real business. Then, from that point forward, let's have a real business-to-business relationship as opposed to a totalitarian-government-to-insignificant-ant relationship. That's a winning formula.
[+] [-] michaelt|13 years ago|reply
If you think there's a market for Google's products but with better customer service, you could form a startup reselling Google's products, with you providing customer service and escalating to Google whenever appropriate.
[+] [-] mrslx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iwejfweoifjweif|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] temphn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] listic|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VigUi7vv8G2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devmach|13 years ago|reply
They can be "google" and they can be good at infrastructure but i see "image transfer" is problematic here: i want to know that i can "speak" with someone when something went wrong , past experiences shows it's nearly impossible.
(When my account is locked ,i don't want to loose my servers, email, docs, im, storage and thereafter my job...)
[+] [-] arihant|13 years ago|reply
Anymore customer service would result in Google writing my apps for me.
[+] [-] salimmadjd|13 years ago|reply
In contrast, at least in regards to other amazon services, their customer service is very high.
Amazon has experience providing customer service and are not ADD like google. When they do something, they stick with it and ensure success across the board.
After my experience with the Google App Engine, I will never trust google with anything else anymore, especially anything that is vital to my business.
[+] [-] notatoad|13 years ago|reply
i'm so sick of seeing this come up every time google introduces anything new. they have, at the very least, adequate customer service, as long as you're their customer. as a gmail user you aren't paying them any money and are therefore not a customer. If you pay for google apps, you get customer service. I'm sure that this product will include customer service at least on par with AWS (which, as far as i'm aware, is basically zilch).
you're not going to 'loose' any servers that you are paying for.
[+] [-] cs702|13 years ago|reply
I also hope the various APIs of all these cloud-computing services (along with build-it-yourself alternatives like OpenStack) somehow coalesce or get meta-abstracted into a single API that works across all services -- akin to what Canonical is trying to accomplish with Project AWSOME[1] but across all major cloud environments. One can dream.
[1] http://www.canonical.com/content/canonical%E2%80%99s-awsome-...
--
UPDATE: Thank you commenters for all the suggestions!
[+] [-] okrasz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] umjames|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] okrasz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] druiid|13 years ago|reply
There are of course also the application management tools like the recently announced CliQr and Rightscale. Both of those work with several different clouds (both private and public).
[+] [-] tmzt|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rorrr|13 years ago|reply
n1-standard-1-d - a single core at $0.145/hr = $105 per month (that's not counting any traffic or storage).
At that price I can get an absolutely kickass dedicated server from Hetzner with 32GB RAM, quad-core Xeon E3-1245, 6TB space, 6TB of disk space, unlimited traffic.
http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex6s
[+] [-] blo|13 years ago|reply
That's $0.145/hr GCE vs. $0.16/hr EC2 vs. $0.077/hr EC2 (heavy reserved 1 yr full time), so the pricing is competitive with Amazon - especially given the extra 0.75 compute units.
The only unknown is whether the compute units are equivalent - the docs only say they are Sandy Bridge-based Intel CPUs.
[+] [-] mtgx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] okrasz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ntkachov|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jmvoodoo|13 years ago|reply
If Google has solved the EBS problem, then this could be amazing.
[+] [-] rscale|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taligent|13 years ago|reply
But agreed that EBS really hurts overall performance.
[+] [-] shimon_e|13 years ago|reply
I find developing my app for cloud providers and learning their APIs, submitting bug reports when stuff doesn't work as expected, etc to be more work than opening an account with a data centre and renting hardware as needed. Each to their own.
[+] [-] ajross|13 years ago|reply
The differences are in scale (how many can you get and how fast -- cloud wins huge here), price (cloud hosting is more expensive over the long term) and granularity (bill by the hour vs. by the month).
[+] [-] jshen|13 years ago|reply
I see no way to say that it's more work on EC2. It may have worse performance, or cost more, but that is an entirely different argument.
[+] [-] georgemcbay|13 years ago|reply
On the other hand, having two very strong nearly-direct competitors in this area is bound to have a very positive (for customers) longer term pricing impact. For that reason, I hope they succeed with this.
[+] [-] vannevar|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bjartr|13 years ago|reply
Every Google product exists to one end: Get more people looking at Google Ads.
Google ads are so pervasive that almost anything that gets people to be on the internet more is straight up beneficial to Google.
Search? Ads right there.
Gmail? Ads right there.
Youtube? Ads right there.
Google 411? Collect massive quantities of voice samples to train the systems that became Youtube's automatic subtitle system. More features on Youtube = more eyes on ads.
Android? Web browser in your pocket = ad delivery in your pocket. Then there's in app ads too. And then there's the invaluable data mining that makes the ads worth more to sellers by making them more effective.
Google+? Never leaving Facebook means never seeing a Google ad, action had to be taken.
Google+/Chrome/Currents for iOS? Get people on that other device looking at more ads too!
Self driving car? Can you imagine how many ads you could be looking at during the time you normally spend driving?!
Glass? Ads ALL THE TIME.
[+] [-] bennysaurus|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jstalin|13 years ago|reply
The cheapest tier on Amazon is less than $15 a month.
[+] [-] velodrome|13 years ago|reply
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2012/06/google-compute-...
I wonder how cost efficient the instances are vs. EC2.
[+] [-] brainless|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] asto|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samrat|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NonEUCitizen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dm8|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrb|13 years ago|reply
Google sells 1GB at a fixed cost of $0.10. No monthly cost. Whereas an Amazon EC2 EBS volume costs $0.10 per GB every month you keep it around.
Google sounds ideal for storing large amount of data that is not used very often.
[+] [-] clhodapp|13 years ago|reply
Edit: You guys are right, obviously, they will almost certainly offer slower, cheaper machines at some point (even if this wasn't part of their original plan, there is a visible demand, which should motivate action). However, my real point is that I'm guessing that this initial roll-out does map more closely to what they use themselves than whatever their eventual full catalog of offerings looks like.
[+] [-] SoftwareMaven|13 years ago|reply
More likely, the want to limit the onslaught until after they've worked out the kinks.
[+] [-] peq|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wickedchicken|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aristus|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brainless|13 years ago|reply
So would it be ok to assume the Google n1-standard-1 equivalent would perform better than medium on AWS?
[+] [-] tszming|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akh|13 years ago|reply