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by slownews45 1791 days ago
Are they really that into it though? Azure is clearly do or die for Microsoft. Amazon pioneered AWS so lots of true believers there.

GCP (ie, customer facing piece) feels a bit like a me too thing no? Glad it exists to keep AWS a bit honest (Azure / Microsoft really has a different sales channel to me).
3 comments
codyogden 1791 days ago
Yes. They are very ‘into it.’ I’ve spoken with plenty of execs at Google Cloud to know that it is a serious piece of Google’s business, that they are committed to GCP, and customers have no reason to doubt its longevity. This coming from someone who is known as Google’s biggest critic. (@killedbygoogle)
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suresk 1791 days ago
> GCP (ie, customer facing piece) feels a bit like a me too thing no?

"Me-too" or not, it is approaching $20b/year in revenue, growing quickly, and about to the point where it could start throwing off a lot of cash.

I don't know how you quantify how "into it" they are, but seems like they are at least a little bit?

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slownews45 1790 days ago
Historically their (internal) culture was a monorepo, keep things clean, refactor, OK to break things because you could also refactor the entire code / API.

Sounds kind of awesome!

The problem is externally this is total madness. You CANNOT just keep on breaking everything on your customers.

I was very early on both AWS and GCP. There is literally no comparison between these companies in terms of cloud offerings and how much has been blown up, neglected etc on the GCP side vs AWS.

This cloud stuff is going to be less "cool" than google is used to - it's going to need them to carry around some older API's (ie, technical debt) etc etc so they don't constantly screw their customers. So it just doesn't feel like its in their DNA.

AWS is all about making customer happy -> that work well.

Google is about cool tech and doing the new things -> that doesn't work well.

Maybe spin GCP off with some old industry folks mixed into the new hotness?

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dekhn 1791 days ago
yes, it took a while for google to realize this but they are in cloud for the long haul. They will continue to be #3 for the foreseeable future, as nothing in their pricing or tech really makes them the preferred provider.
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slownews45 1790 days ago
I love they are around as a check on AWS. I do think they are sorting things out a bit just to get the money (which is huge).
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