I skimmed the article, and this seems to explain a few things for me. The image I have in my mind is that Google is Google, masters of the datacenter. If they can build the most reliable website on earth (e.g. Google's down? Internet must be down) then their cloud service must be stellar. And yet, having switched from AWS to Google a few months ago at work, our experiences have left me sorely disappointed. It's been a nightmare, honestly. Why such a difference between what I expected and what we experienced?
The article seems to allude that Google's cloud offerings are, like a lot of services they offer, just side projects for them. That would explain why a lot of their platform feels half-baked. And the article (clearly a PR piece) waffles on about how Diane Greene has brought in lots of sales and marketing muscle. I see that clearly in the large amount of PR articles about Google Cloud floating around (including on Hacker News) and the sheer quantity of Google employees on social media and on here. I don't see the same from AWS. At first I saw that as a good thing, but it seems like the same effort that goes into their marketing and customer engagement has not gone into the technical side of things, despite what the article may say.
Perhaps that's a necessity of business. Maybe Alphabet doesn't want to pour more resources into Google Cloud without seeing more revenue. So Diane Greene is beefing up the numbers so she can get the technical resources she needs allocated. Maybe. My personal opinion remains doubtful, given Google's overarching track record, but time will tell.
Google Cloud is by no means unusable. It's a nightmare to work with, yes, but it does work, and if you've got the engineers on staff to handle the extra workload, then it's fine. We're going to continue to put up with it, because Google's particular mix of offerings allows us to save money and at the end of the day that's the common tongue. I just wish they wouldn't make my life more difficult.
The article seems to allude that Google's cloud offerings are, like a lot of services they offer, just side projects for them. That would explain why a lot of their platform feels half-baked. And the article (clearly a PR piece) waffles on about how Diane Greene has brought in lots of sales and marketing muscle. I see that clearly in the large amount of PR articles about Google Cloud floating around (including on Hacker News) and the sheer quantity of Google employees on social media and on here. I don't see the same from AWS. At first I saw that as a good thing, but it seems like the same effort that goes into their marketing and customer engagement has not gone into the technical side of things, despite what the article may say.
Perhaps that's a necessity of business. Maybe Alphabet doesn't want to pour more resources into Google Cloud without seeing more revenue. So Diane Greene is beefing up the numbers so she can get the technical resources she needs allocated. Maybe. My personal opinion remains doubtful, given Google's overarching track record, but time will tell.
Google Cloud is by no means unusable. It's a nightmare to work with, yes, but it does work, and if you've got the engineers on staff to handle the extra workload, then it's fine. We're going to continue to put up with it, because Google's particular mix of offerings allows us to save money and at the end of the day that's the common tongue. I just wish they wouldn't make my life more difficult.