But then what I don’t get is why is it advertised as a separate product. If it’s just a managed App Engine application then it shouldn’t be called “Cloud Datastore” and have a top link on your Cloud products page. However if it’s a standalone product then Google should eat the instance costs. It would be crazy if Maps API started charging for instances suddenly…
If you want to charge for instances then the way to do it is the DynamoDB’s way — charge for throughput. The actual number of instances should be an implementation detail. At least that way it’s deterministic and you can feature it prominently on your pricing page with an appropriate calculator.
Until then the advertising is completely misleading if not dishonest, since I’m pretty sure the instance costs would be quite significant for any use case that tries to use “Cloud Datastore” as a standalone db solution for GCE ecosystem, rather than to just run some Map Reduce for an App Engine app.
If you want to charge for instances then the way to do it is the DynamoDB’s way — charge for throughput. The actual number of instances should be an implementation detail. At least that way it’s deterministic and you can feature it prominently on your pricing page with an appropriate calculator.
Until then the advertising is completely misleading if not dishonest, since I’m pretty sure the instance costs would be quite significant for any use case that tries to use “Cloud Datastore” as a standalone db solution for GCE ecosystem, rather than to just run some Map Reduce for an App Engine app.