Agreed that Google isn’t going to announce one day that they’re going to demolish all the datacenters in 30 days, but that doesn’t mean that GCP has any guaranteed future either. If Google leadership decides to walk away from cloud hosting, it’ll come in the form of reallocated engineers, reduced headcount, smaller conferences, and a general transition to “maintenance mode”. (At which point it’s a corporate backwater and everyone who can transfer out will.)
But for companies picking a cloud platform tomorrow, that’s a fate as good as death! AWS and Azure won’t slow down development and new features, so a couple years after GCP stops being a priority, it’ll start also being a bad deal, and a couple years after that it’ll be a straight-up strategic liability. THAT is why anything other than full-throated support from Google leadership for indefinite GCP investment will lose them business.
And maybe they won’t kill it, but I ve had a number of times platform changes killed features I used. Thing is, with a company I pay for I can vote with my wallet. With Google it’s just sending a message and hoping it doesn’t end up in nullspace somewhere.
Google is just too big as a company, and if they replaced every human in it with drones no one would know the difference. There is no human face or point of contact or any accountability and it’s becoming a problem.
My girlfriend was able to get on the phone with a tech support person for her small business ads and I was shocked she was able to even talk to someone at Google over a phone without being a major company with a big monthly bill.
The woman was still snarky to her and unhelpful but still a real human was available.
A lot of this has to do with our own perceptions and trust. Purchasing decisions are never fully rational or information complete.
> that doesn’t mean that GCP has any guaranteed future either.
Nothing has a guaranteed future.
> AWS and Azure won’t slow down development
As long as it's paying off, they won't, and AWS maybe for longer even if it isn't. But Microsoft is no stranger to making investments in offerings and letting them stagnate or outright killing them if they don't pay off.
But for companies picking a cloud platform tomorrow, that’s a fate as good as death! AWS and Azure won’t slow down development and new features, so a couple years after GCP stops being a priority, it’ll start also being a bad deal, and a couple years after that it’ll be a straight-up strategic liability. THAT is why anything other than full-throated support from Google leadership for indefinite GCP investment will lose them business.