[detaro]

> This is a new piece of hardware

Only "new" in the sense that it is currently not commonly offered, the devices themselves have been available for ages. (If you are a large enough customer you apparently can get at least some colo-facilities to provide you with the roof-access and cabling needed for the antennas). If cloud providers make precise time available I don't see much potential for locking you in with their specific way of providing it, as long as it ends up as precise system time in some way.

[throwawaydbfif]

I'm saying I doubt they will ever offer it precisely because it will conflict with their paid offerings. The fact that it takes its hardware is a great excuse to not give your customers the option.

I know GPS time sources have been available forever but a fault tolent database needs a backup. The US GPS is incredibly reliable but there have been multiple issues with both Glonass and Galilio.

It sounds like Google has an additional time source making this possible, probably a highly miniaturized atomic clock, possibly on a single chip. There's no way they're running on GPS alone

[detaro]

Yes, they clearly say that they use atomic clocks in addition, but that's commercially available as well. Atomic clock for frequency stability short- to mid-term, GPS to keep it synced to global time. E.g. in many cases, mobile-phone base stations contain just such a setup, and the data-center versions should fit in a few HE.

[stuckagain]

And then all you need is a team of 12 full time SREs to manage it.

[detaro]

A system build on top of it? Possibly, but thats the trade-off if you don't want to pay for/be lock-in to somebody else running it. For just the timing stuff: not really. Of course it adds complexity, but these things are established and should be quite stable.