[dehrmann]

Google really dropped the ball on missing cloud computing. With their expertise, they should have owned the space, it's just never the sort of idea that would bubble up in that org.

But balloons to deliver internet in rural areas? They're the leader in that space.

[daxfohl]

I think it's more they wanted to do it on their own terms. They wanted to provide the best most scalable cloud platform ever in GAE, but users wanted more of a dumbed-down lift-and-shift-friendly variant that AWS offered.

[meddlepal]

Which is kind of a different problem with Google: Ivory Tower, we know better than you thinking.