[jedberg]

> Seems like it would be risky for companies to switch to Google Cloud because it might end up in the graveyard

It's sort of a Catch-22 for them. They are this far behind in part because people fear they might not be around long term, and they might not be, because people don't want to sign up, because they fear it might not be. :)

[toohotatopic]

Could they win customers by implementing their APIs on AWS so that people can move to AWS should Google discontinue their services?

They could still make money by being far more efficient when running their software natively on their own stack.

[jedberg]

Chasing AWS's APIs probably isn't a good use of their time, and wouldn't encourage a lot of people to move.

API compatibility is not the biggest blocker to changing clouds -- moving one's data is.

The could work out a deal where outbound data from Google to AWS is free, but that probably wouldn't be in their best interests either.

I think their strategy of being the best place to run K8s is a good one. If you standardize on K8s you can run on any cloud, and they want to be the best place to do that.

Still have the data problem though.

[xur17]

To some extent they are doing this by embracing Kubernetes. For us, almost all of our infrastructure other than databases is running directly on GKE, so moving to AWS or Azure would be fairly easy.

[scarface74]

You’re falling for the “OMG Lock In” fallacy. Even if all of the APIs are compatible, if you have any type of scale and even if you’re just running a bunch of VMs, the pain of migrating infrastructure, security, data, network, auditing, connecting back to your on prem network is often a painful multi month process with huge risks of regressions