Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by drdaeman 5455 days ago
G+ is about moving everything into the Google "cloud". In a same way Facebook (and VKontakte, and whatever else) is about moving everything into their "cloud".

Cloud is a buzzword, it doesn't really mean anything here.

G+ is just a Buzz (thus, GMail) + GTalk + Picasa + Latitude + Google Profiles, covered under one convenient interface. You can't peer with it, you have to actually use it itself (i.e., have and maintain an account there). Yes, there are some APIs to control that account (FB has some, too), and you could have a backup copy of your own data, but doesn't really matter.

It's still almost exactly the same as Facebook.
2 comments
sc68cal 5455 days ago
YES! I stopped reading when I hit that slide. It's a bunch of bullshit and handwaving that people do when they don't know what the hell they're talking about.
link
JanezStupar 5455 days ago
You can't do that YET.

As far as Cloud hype & buzzwords goes. I was of same opinion until I started doing my startup. Now basically all infrastructure I have (besides my personal computers) is of SAAS nature somewhere in yes Cloud.

We could say Internet, but that would be confusing - since Internet is such a broad term.

For what its worth as a reformed nonbeliever I'm telling you. Cloud is awesome and its here to stay. So you better get used to it.

link
drdaeman 5455 days ago
Cloud is a good thing, but it is pointless buzzword in that context. "Cloud" is when you distribute your stuff over some cluster of physical machines. This increases reliability, allows to scale performance, simplifies deployment and so on. Does it matter to end-user how Google infrastructure's organised inside?

Sure, some cloud providers have compatible APIs (as this is the case with Amazon S3 API), so the data could be moved between "clouds" easily. Compatibility is not a general property of a "cloud", and moreover - this is not a case with G+.

And SAAS is not a "cloud", it's just that nowadays most SAAS are marketed as "cloud" because they internally rely on some distributed storage or processing system. It's just that "cloud" quickly became a buzzword, replacing cumbersome "SAAS" abbreviation.

We've had SAAS in 90's (and, probably, earlier). Remember hosted forums, webchats and guestbooks? This was certainly SAAS, and probably not a "cloud".

link