Interesting article. For anyone working with Google's Cloud Platform, there are definitely changes happening both in product and culture.
As a company that's used all the major clouds and vendors out there (AWS, Azure, Softlayer, GCP, Internap), Google's has been the best so far with simple fast tech that works. They are clearly behind in features and breadth of offering but I agree with Diane's statements that the underlying tech is just better. Quizley has a good article recently that goes into more detail which is what we saw as well. [1]
I do wish the GCP team was easier to reach though. They have lots of engineers and PM's who are active on social media and discussions forums and such but it feels like things are too "informal" in conversations right now. It's nice to see everyone passionate about helping on their own time but AWS has them beat on the vast amount of help and resources they pour into getting clients of all sizes onboarded quickly. I'm guessing that will change soon enough with all the hiring at Google.
Whom would you like to reach? (sounds like PMs and/or engineers). I'd consider it okay that you ping me and I route your issues to the relevant folks (there's always going to be routing), but for existing customers most questions naturally should go through support (either directly or via requests from Sales when a customer contacts them). Are you an active customer who is having trouble reaching us? Or a prospective customer who doesn't find the current channels working? (I ask to know what to work on, not to accuse).
sorry if it's the wrong place to report an issue that I faced recently with GCP.
I had reached the limit of max projects one can have in their dashboard. I deleted some projects and when I tried to create a new project, I was getting the same message .
I had to wait for a week to create a new project ( the time window in which user can stop project deletion )
this really prevented me from trying some new services in spite of GCP giving generous $300 credit.
Interesting, I thought there was a "Seriously, I know what I'm doing, delete right now".
I've never run into this, and apparently that's because the issue is that we have a limit of 10 free trial projects (to prevent abuse). I'll look into the "Seriously, let me delete immediately" thing though.
I'm curious why you would need to delete projects and create new ones just to try out new products and services—could you please clarify?
A project is just a container for resources. You can use any combination of GCP products and services within a single project—you are only charged for the resources you use, so just deleting what you created earlier would get you to a zero-state.
Perhaps I should restate: I can reach most people via forums/social (although ignored plenty of times including the main startup guy) but the conversations and the platform just seem informal as if this entire thing is a side project (I know it's not).
We're a paying customer and I understand tiered support is available (as it is with every vendor) but there's a distinct difference in on-boarding, which is even more important and has to happen before we're a stable long-term client with a support contract. GCP is very barren in on-boarding resources and opaque in happenings. Here are some of my recommendations:
- The APIs (which are quite literally how applications connect to the platform) need a lot of work. I know there are idiomatic versions in progress but this has to be improved rapidly, like yesterday. They just don't seem production ready (they're even called alpha). I don't want to dig around github, I just expect to use them in whatever major language I'm writing.
- Documentation has recently gotten much better (good job!) but was terrible for a long time and is still confusing in parts. Add more solution/use-case oriented writeups. This is often the best way to understand how to use a new service rather than wondering how to make it best fit our app.
- Send an email as soon as an account is spending more than $1k/mth and see what they're doing and how you can help. Don't mention anything about buying a support plan or offer it free for the first quarter until everything is setup. The money is far outweighed by the goodwill.
- Properly staff the startups department so they can vet companies instead of outsourcing this to VCs/Accelerators. Right now you're turning away many companies that are bootstrapped or have other needs and are actually focused on building sustainable/profitable companies - the ones that will become long-term paying clients for you.
- Put out a roadmap with more detail or let companies take part in planning the next features. There seems to be only vague indications of what's coming up in the future.
Formality, reliability, assurance and easy access are critical, especially when you're asking companies to build on you as a foundation. The basics of computing are becoming commoditized so it's important that the services and service are able to differentiate.
I get the sense that the GCP team is aware of all this though so good luck, we all want a great platform and I can't wait to see what's in store.
Appreciate your taking the time to write this up in detail, and thanks for not sugar-coating it. We'll share this with the relevant teams and work on improvements across the board. Great to hear that you like the changes to the docs!
My startup was awarded $10k in Google Cloud hosting credits at Web Summit. By the time we went to launch they had expired. If you know of anyone at Google who would be open to helping us redeem them that'd be awesome! My email is hn (at) joinjune (dot) com
Hi, I'm a product manager on Google Cloud Platform. Sorry to hear that your credits expired before you could try out GCP.
I inquired on your behalf, and was told that the Web Summit you're referring to is from 2014 (2 years ago), and the credits expired in 2015 (1 year ago), and unfortunately, this program is no longer available.
That said, we do have a credits program for startups (https://cloud.google.com/startups/) but you cannot apply for it directly, you need to "contact your VC, Accelerator, or Incubator and ask about GCP for Startups application details." (quote from the site)
In the mean time, if you just want to kick the tires, you can sign up on https://cloud.google.com for a free trial.
As a company that's used all the major clouds and vendors out there (AWS, Azure, Softlayer, GCP, Internap), Google's has been the best so far with simple fast tech that works. They are clearly behind in features and breadth of offering but I agree with Diane's statements that the underlying tech is just better. Quizley has a good article recently that goes into more detail which is what we saw as well. [1]
I do wish the GCP team was easier to reach though. They have lots of engineers and PM's who are active on social media and discussions forums and such but it feels like things are too "informal" in conversations right now. It's nice to see everyone passionate about helping on their own time but AWS has them beat on the vast amount of help and resources they pour into getting clients of all sizes onboarded quickly. I'm guessing that will change soon enough with all the hiring at Google.
1. https://quizlet.com/blog/whats-the-best-cloud-probably-gcp