[deesix]

Disclosure: I work on GCP

Thanks for the feedback. As the person that named both products, I can say we spent a ton of time debating this but we felt that the fact one is an enterprise file share and the other a document database service focused on mobile and web would mean very little conflict for customers. We will keep an eye on any customer confusion it might cause.

[jedberg]

Please make sure you read this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17402427

It explains why this is linguistically bad. Basically, a billion people on this planet don't distinguish between the l and r sounds, so for 1/6 of the planet, these names are identical.

[Gigablah]

Native Chinese speaker here. That post is comically wrong. For one thing, you don't pronounce either "file" or "fire" like "filer" or "firer" -- isn't English amazing ;) -- so there's no L/R sound in the first place for us to supposedly confuse.

[IanCal]

I mean all of the following in the best possible way:

Perhaps also worth looking at the screenshot in the blogpost.

You have in there:

---

Datastore

Storage

Filestore

---

So, datastore is not storage, nor is filestore. What is it storage storing if not data or files? Why are files not data? I have no idea what should go where.

> We know folks need to create, read and write large files with low latency. We also know that film studios and production shops are always looking to render movies and create CGI images faster and more efficiently. So alongside our LA region launch,

So I couldn't create, read or write before without low latency? I thought this was already a feature of your other products

> we’re pleased to enable these creative projects by bringing file storage capabilities to GCP for the first time with Cloud Filestore.

For the first time? I couldn't store files before?

I'm not trying to be an arse, but I really don't get from this what the key difference is from everything else you offer.

[derefr]

> What is it storage storing if not data or files?

Objects. Cloud Storage is the S3 competitor.

> Why are files not data?

“Data” as in rows in a database. Like Dynamo.

Everything on a computer is data. The thing you’ve got to understand is that the terms we use, “objects”, “files”, “data” — these don’t refer to types of data, but rather to access paradigms for data. The semantics of their storage, indexing, mutability, etc.

An object is a blob of data named by a key, that you can retrieve entirely, or overwrite entirely, and where usually you automatically get a version history of old versions that have been overwritten that you can retrieve, with a cutoff for automatic GC.

“Data” is a structured tuple that a database knows how to index into, and sort by the columns of. You insert rows, update columns of rows by a key, or delete rows by a key.

“Files” are seekable streams where you can index anywhere into a file by position and then read(2) or write(2) data at that position, and where other clients can see those updates as soon as you sync(2), without needing to close(2) the file first.

All could be used to implement the other (S3 is implemented in terms of Dynamo rows holding chunks of object data, for example.) But each access semantics has use-cases for which it is an impedance match or mismatch.

[IanCal]

Thanks for the explanation, the file/object/data difference makes sense.

> An object is a blob of data named by a key, that you can retrieve entirely, or overwrite entirely, and where usually you automatically get a version history of old versions that have been overwritten that you can retrieve, with a cutoff for automatic GC.

And yet they refer to the objects inside as "Files" and support seeking

https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python/goog...

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14248333/google-cloud-st...

I know this is just bikeshedding about names and terms but it feels confused.

I think some of the confusion in the list is because of the mix of generic and product naming.

Data can be stored in datastore. But also in "spanner" or "bigtable", which are not parts of "datastore", or in "SQL" which is a language. Object can be stored in the object store called "storage" which is also within an entire category itself called "storage". So there's "Storage" which is a group of all these kinds of stores, and "Storage" which is a very specific type of store.

[ttul]

This will be extremely confusing for Japanese and Korean speakers.

[cellularmitosis]

I think its worth adding some additional phonetic context around this remark (I made a similar remark and my coworkers thought I was making a racist joke).

The reason native Japanese speakers struggle with "R" and "L" sounds is because they just have one phoneme to work with, which sounds (to a native English speaker) like a combination of "R", "L", and "D". If you aren't exposed to phonemes at a young age, it is difficult to expand your set later in life.

An analogous difficulty might exist for English speakers if a Chinese company came up with two product names which used the exact same sequence of syllables, but had "tonal" differences in pronunciation.

[yongjik]

Actually, not that much for Korean speakers, because "file" becomes "pa-il" and "fire" becomes "pa-i-eo". (Damn English triphthongs...)

Hopefully they won't launch Cloud Pyrestore any time soon...

[lioeters]

Similarly for Japanese, "file" is pronounced/written as "fairu" and "fire" as "faiyaa". If the service docs are translated, then they would look like (and sound as) difference names.

[nerpderp83]

By the heat of the fire, and play their songs from LyreStore.

Floating plastic would go in the GyreStore.

If you had a bunch muck it would go in MireStore.

[borplk]

This will be extremely confusing for anyone.

[deesix]

Disclosure: I work on GCP

Thanks for highlighting. We were aware of this and working with the local sales teams to make it as easy as possible.

[vasco]

Even if the products are for different types of customers all of them will still need to click the right one.

[oavdeev]

I mean.. I get it, there isn't a lot to work with, it is a thing that _stores files_ after all, and it most closely resembles a normal filesystem.

But it does make GCP's storage product naming even more confusing overall (after "Cloud Storage" vs "Cloud Datastore" mentioned above).

[pinewurst]

What about when the names are spoken, especially by non-native English speakers? They're close homonyms.

[iagovar]

I'm non native English speaker and I didn't notice the difference.

Please, use useful names that do tell what is it about.

[ak217]

Not only is it confusingly similar to other storage products, but the abbreviations collide among all of them. GCF means how many different things now? (I always considered it to mean Google Cloud Functions - kind of an important product.) Don't underestimate the importance of these things. I can't even talk to my colleagues about your products without us all misunderstanding each other.

[foobiekr]

What was so special about the name that it was even worth the debate? Why not avoid the problem?

[some_account]

You made the wrong choice.

[niftich]

Update the chooser flowchart [1] when it's out of beta or when appropriate. This page also has brief descriptions and comparison tables.

[1] https://cloud.google.com/storage-options/

[mandeepj]

> I can say we spent a ton of time debating this but we felt that the fact one is an enterprise file share and the other a document database service focused on mobile and web would mean very little conflict for customers.

How about naming one as Cloud FileStore and other as Cloud DbStore?

[kuwze]

Maybe you could give them pokemon/ikea-like nicknames? Stupid idea, but it might really help people searching for stuff.

[bigtones]

Oh oh, it's already causing a lot of confusion. Just check the 70+ comments in this thread alone hating on the naming and professing their confusion and it's been out less than 12 hours... and that is from a self selecting very tech savvy audience. I think you've got a problem.

[borplk]

Spent a ton of time and still decided to stick to names that differ by a single "r vs l" letter.

Wow. Don't mean to be rude but go for a walk outside and speak to 3 people outside the bubble.

[deesix]

Disclosure: I work on GCP

Thanks for the feedback. We spoke to number of existing GCP customers for feedback, but it's fair to say we can always talk to more non-customers.

[stingraycharles]

To be fair, I think “Filestore” in itself is a pretty descriptive name, and the real problem is the name “Firestore”. I can imagine the internal discussion when a bit like that as well, and here we have the result.

[dymk]

You don't see the irony in that statement, as you toss in your low-effort criticism just to stoke the HN feeding frenzy?

[borplk]

> low-effort criticism

It's a clear blunt suggestion to get out of their bubble.

No one outside Google would hear that explanation and say "Yeah totally makes sense one of them is an enterprise file share and the other a document database service focused on mobile and web, crystal clear and very little confusion.".

What more do you want out of my comment for it to not be low effort? Write a 3 page essay about it carefully making a case based on peer reviewed scientific evidence?

[dymk]

You misunderstand, the comment provided no value at all; it’s not that I wanted peer review studies.