DISQUS

smmilton · 1 year ago

I don't think we'll see Google, Yahoo or Microsoft give away for free anything like this in the foreseeable future. However, it is more reasonable to posit that they might give the "Crack deal" special. The first 1/100th of a continuous CPU for free, and some bandwidth transfer thrown in. More akin to the differentiation between the free version of Gmail, and the paid versions with fewer constraints, no ads, more features, etc.

dave · 1 year ago

So you don't think the costs of acqusitions, recruiting and training are well balanced by the cost of the service?

smmilton · 1 year ago

I think that the equating of those types of soft costs (associated with unknown future events) with the hard costs (fixed monthly budget items) would not play well in any corporate board room, even Google's. I think it would be more palatable as a hedge, with the "new things that I'm not willing to try as long as I have to pay" applications finding a free home, and easy initial development; and then more resource intensive services paying more reasonable prices than Amazon's system.

Google should definitely not use Amazon's instance-hour method for charging CPU resources. Since Amazon prices are based upon instance running hours, the cheapest you can get a continuously running server on Amazon is approx $75/month. This is comparable to standard dedicated server prices. If their CPU pricing was setup on a more granular basis, you could run smaller projects and tests on their system.

Sam · 1 year ago

Actually Yahoo and Google would have to give it away for free because the margins would be so bad if they charged it would bring down the performance of their businesses. On the other hand, Amazon started with a retail business with terrible margins and AWS can actually make their business performance look better.

dave · 1 year ago

Bing! I think you nailed it. Think of all the infrastructure Google would have to create just to charge you $50 for a teeny bit of web services (I doubt my services would cost them more than say 50000 GMail users).

Kip · 1 year ago

Dave, yes. Amazon created AWS to make use of infrastructure they needed for peak times (Christmais) but was unused most of the time. Would it be cost effective for them to create (or expand past their own current needs?)? Microsoft of course can recoup costs of building out infrastructure (and buying Yahoo in the process) by selling services to enterprise. Can Google?

Jim Roepcke · 1 year ago

I don't think that'd be an issue. Google already has the infrastructure to charge people money for services (AdSense). And their infrastructure is so mammoth, that would be a needle in a haystack of haystacks.

smmilton · 1 year ago

Your idea backs up the argument for giving the service for free to the low-end fodder sites, and only charging for larger users. But... they do have the infrastructure for micro-payments, namely Google Checkout. Plus, they already charge this level of fees for things like premium Gmail accounts, Google Mail Partner Edition, and AdWords. However, I agree that the margin would look meager compared to their core services like AdWords.

dotcoma · 1 year ago

agree. Amazon started with a really bad business (as compared to selling adwords, for example) but their AWS model is also flawed, once Google etc jump into the game.

Philipp Lenssen · 1 year ago

Would be nice to have this, though Google already cancelled* their SOAP search API (which was very useful, but also very broken, at least in its later month to years) in favor of the AJAX search API (which I find less useful).
*Well, they don't allow new sign-ups, and old sign-ups aren't really supported anymore, though you can still use old API keys... if you are OK to live with an API that has totally flaky response, at least time I checked.

bowenmark · 1 year ago

don't forget who has the know how and computing horsepower too, perhaps it's more than a matter of timing than anyone is willing to admit

nytimes.com/2006/06/14/technology/14search.html

John · 1 year ago

I found your comment about Apple amusing. Apple wants to control the end user experience. some people don't like the idea of "control" but actually I'd rather see a load of quality apps than have to wade through thousands of crap ones

Nat Torkington · 1 year ago

Hi, Dave. I think Hadoop is the "get the world using our platform" play. They've done work in universities, giving away a few machines in a cluster running Hadoop and offering course materials for an "intro to distributed systems" that use the open source version of their tools.

dave · 1 year ago

Isn't that what Yahoo uses?

Nat Torkington · 1 year ago

Y! doesn't have a central infrastructure for distributed computation (does that make sense?) the way Google does. I've read they have some systems using Hadoop, but I suspect they're not a large part of any major Yahoo! property (don't know first-hand from a Yahoo!, though, so am not gospel on this).

The funny thing is that it was *Google* doing the get-out-the-word in the universities around Hadoop. I guess they're confident that if the grads are smart and proficient in tools, Google will still have the edge over Yahoo! in hiring.

Ryan Mahoski · 1 year ago

What would be AWS' incentive for providing all those services for free? Amused bloggers would not drive traffic to Amazon.com, they'd send developers to AWS. If AWS' goal is altruism, what is Amazon.com's incentive for paying AWS' bills? I don't know at what point Cluetrain draws the line between giving stuff away and charging for it. But a good example here is FPS; in many transactions, AWS incurs merchant fees when it brokers payments between customers. It may not even be legal for FPS to eat those transaction fees if they wanted to. Mturk transaction fees are low considering the advantage requesters have to tap sweatshop level resources programmatically. The Fulfillment web service is already free; it seems unlikely Amazon.com would consider eating the warehouse labor (picking, packing, and shipping) costs it currently passes on to registered FBA merchants. I only read today's post - maybe your purview is just the data storage services: s3, ec2, sqs, simpledb. If so I take your point--but remember AWS has no real competition yet. When competition arrives, AWS can always lower its fee structures to undercut Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc. Until then, what is AWS' incentive to give away a service commodity in which they currently enjoy a monopoly? I don't know what projects you're considering; not every project is right for AWS, but many are.

dave · 1 year ago

Did you read the post you're supposedly responding to?

Ryan Mahoski · 1 year ago

If I went off on a tangent, please excuse me. I was responding to this section of your post: "...I don't see why Amazon charges me to use AWS. I think I produce as much value for them as I use just by writing about it but they haven't been willing to bend...If there was no cost to it, I'd use their services..."

agawley · 1 year ago

Some of the value to Amazon of charging a _nominal_ fee must come in the form of 'Spam' reduction (or whatever the application equivalent of Spam is. Like the listing fee on eBay?

jon bradford · 1 year ago

In Dave's original post - he did say ...

"For a guy like you, a blogger, with modest needs, it would be free."

So do we have a free "Standard Apps" version and a paid for "Premium Apps"?

They didn't following Yahoo with unlimited emails, so for modest usage "have a play" GWS might be free for professional apps - pay for it.

mal · 1 year ago

what if you play in the open social sandbox? won't there be free APIs, data portability, etc? the cost at most your ad ridden privacy...? maybe I'm dreaming when I should be dreaming 5:50 am - ouch.

Colin Faulkingham · 1 year ago

Acquisitions, recruiting and training? I am not so sure about that. It seems like that would be a really,really soft ROI. From my perspective I can think of a couple of few applications that could be written for my company that would benefit from the performance, stability and simplicity of the Google Cloud. It's the everyday applications that small and mid-size business use that is the real pot of gold.

Why is it Gold? Because it transfers control from Microsoft DNA to Google DNA for the most part. If the hypothetical service is offered in the same manner as the "Google Apps" for you domains where free means ad's vs paying not to see ads, then Google wins either way.Even if the service is free and they don't show ad's then Google wins because there are weaking Microsoft ability to catch up.

BTW,
The company I work for (400+ employees) is also a paying customer for Google App's for your domain, we also own a couple of Google Minis and use Google Base, Google Maps, Google Analytics , Google AdWords, Google Webmasters Tools, Google Search etc.. It's getting to be a large part of our DNA.

Folknology · 1 year ago

I certainly think they need to do something like this to take on Amazon and potentially Microhoo.

I am not sure however how they can manage free. Free would make them a real target for the less than scrupulous operators. If Google offered free EC2 instances, spam networks would be pulling up spam email/blog/bot servers faster than Google could shut them down. I mean look at Blogger for an example of free becomes spamsville.

It will certainly be interesting to see what they do, and competition is always a good thing for the market.
regards
Al

chuck · 1 year ago

the simpler reason is that google has an enormous cash cow right now in search ads. they can afford to make their web services free in hopes for returns later. if they say that's not the reason, then they would have to have the same approach when their operating margins are under greater pressure.

as for amazon not giving their stuff away, look at their operating margins- they can't afford to do that and not have the shareholders revolt. it's naive to ignore the business reality that amazon can't behave like google.

if one were to argue... "that before they(google) had search ads they gave away search". big deal, lots of startups give away stuff to get going. that lasts as long as the affordability of the money allows it. in a startup's context, *money* is VC money, in google's case money is the future cash flows from a dominant share in a high margin, highly scaleable business.

jaxn · 1 year ago

I really hope what you are talking about does come to fruition. I have a startup I am trying to launch but cannot afford to do so (money is tight as the single earner for a family of six). Something like AWS that was free from Google would be a game changer for my life.

Ryan · 1 year ago

sounds like you're channeling kevin burton, from way back in september 2007:

http://feedblog.org/2007/09/14/engineering-open...

Folknology · 1 year ago

Posted a some details of how Google could implement a freemium cloud play
http://www.folknology.com/blogs/default/2008/04...
It is mostly speculation of course but I am locking onto a lot of Steve Yegge's work inside Google, You have to admit that they have certainly laid some clues through folks like Steve!!

regards
Al

Don Jackson · 1 year ago

Maybe it will be offered for free, but will there be an SLA?
I believe some of the AWS services now have an SLA.

Sametal847 · 1 year ago

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/04/source-goo...
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/06/major-goog...

pbreit · 1 year ago

One thing about these types of services is that there needs to be a replacement that one could switch to for whatever reason, else it's just too risky for anything but hobbies. Another interesting player is Mosso.

snyggast · 1 year ago

It will not be free. Trust me. Anyone here who uses Google's App for your domain know that. I use gmail for my domain and I only get to sign up 100 people. If you want more, you'll have to pay.

tbagger · 1 year ago

The smart thing about google strategy is that they charge nothing for the 99% of us who depend on Google for personal or small business use. There there is the 1% like snygast (previous posting) who, representing a company with IT budget, need to scale their google appetite. These poeple in effect pay for the rest of us.

So same thing about web services: If you really a heavy web service, you get to pay, otherwise it will probably stay free.

harold · 1 year ago

Better to let a thousand flowers bloom knowing that the best ones will be available to you first because their software is perfectly compatible with yours.

Not just that, you have a bit of a lock-in with regard to your tech platform and knowledge when you're already using their stuff.

tasia · 10 months ago

Do i still have Googleervices?

m0nty · 1 year ago

"I don't see why Amazon charges me to use AWS. I think I produce as much value for them as I use just by writing about it"

Pay Per Post?

Einar Vollset · 1 year ago

The problem with free, is that then I'd use 100000 machines for my map reduce jobs and 10000 machines to crawl; in effect Google would be handing over a large chunk of its competitive advantage.