[outworlder]

> Other things like a lack of presence in China could be challenging in the future as well.

Well, to be fair, NONE of the big clouds have any presence in China. They are "in China" in name only.

For instance, 'AWS' China is not AWS, you will be dealing with Sinnet for Beijing or whoever else operates the Ningxia region. The underlying software is a baby version which doesn't have anywhere near the same amount of features. Frankly, the only benefits vs a local cloud provider are that the name is still retained (so you have your bases covered if anyone complains) and the API is AWS compatible.

It is a similar story on the other clouds. So I wouldn't weight this that heavily against Google.

Also, all of this only applies if you have boots on the ground. It's not like one can just create an account in China and run with it. It's an expensive and lengthy process.

[AtlasBarfed]

Ssh'ing into China AWS boxes is like 300 baud modem days born again. I work across from people trying to setup AWS China infrastructure and the curse words fly with alacrity and frequency.

[mcbain]

I’m not sure what you are angling at here.

The China regions might not have all the AWS services present, and they have some extra restrictions, but they aren’t some kind of clones of AWS software.

Unless I’m missing something, they are the same versions of what runs in the other regions.

[halbritt]

You can't go into the AWS console and select a region in China and then provision resources.

AWS-China is literally a different organization with a different service on a different URI and with whom you'll need to establish a different contractual relationship.

[posnet]

It's a different 'partition' the same way that govcloud is a different partition. Separate for legal reasons, but the same technology underneath.

[mooreds]

Limited versions.

No experience with AWS China, but I taught a class to some folks who used one of the restricted AWS regions and the services and features were limited when compared to normal aws regions, according to the students.

[mcqueenjordan]

There are laws and regulations in China about who can own the physical infrastructure, but that doesn't mean that it isn't AWS. The implication that the only benefit is that the name is retained is simply false.

Due to laws and logistics, AWS Classic -> AWS China aren't at full feature parity, but it's certainly not some watered down or different version of the AWS cloud.

[amf12]

> Well, to be fair, NONE of the big clouds have any presence in China. They are "in China" in name only.

Azure has a region in China which is not a baby version of its public cloud offering. It might not have some new SaaS products but for core offerings it's exactly the same feature wise.