[atmosx]

If 20% of Google Cloud's customers leave after this outage because of poor communication they'll prioritise accordingly and apply all that nice SRE theories to their infra. But this isn't happening, because <various reasons>, so... who cares?

[obeattie]

I mean, I care. All else being equal I’m not sure why you wouldn’t want good communication to your customers.

[manigandham]

How much cloud spend do you control? That's the reality of how decisions are made.

[obeattie]

Many millions of dollars per year. I care about how my providers behave when they have issues, and I can't see why you think it's not at all relevant.

[manigandham]

> "why you think it's not at all relevant"

Nobody said this.

> "I care about how my providers behave when they have issues"

We all do.

As the other commenters stated, the communication is poor because the clouds are still growing rapidly and there's not much reason to be better. We might also be underestimating just how much more better service would cost and whether it's worth the revenue loss (if any). Are you really going to shift all of your spend overnight because of an outage? And where are you going to go?

The reality of these decisions is far more nuanced than it may seem and the current state of support is probably already optimized for revenue growth and customer retention.