I agree with Steve. When I first looked at GAE in 2008, I told myself and my colleagues, 'this is the one platform that will change the way we write our software', 'this is the kind of products I expect to come out from a company like Google'. Not only because of the innovative engineering, but also the very reasonable 'no-evil' pricing model.
We have invested our time and money, built 3 GAE apps since. Two pretty much idle and one is active and promising. Now all the sudden, the change comes. Not by little, but from $0 to $9 or by 4 times or so (estimate). This change could make us from profit to near-little profit or deficit. I'd say it is significant. Yes, we should optimize our applications, but I would appreciate I am not forced to spend my precious time just because of Google unilaterally changes the pricing model (dramatically) to be in line with others... If this becomes finalized, I would qualify it as 'let down' or 'breach of trust', as others have suggested. I would be very cautious before doing anything on technologies from Google which are labeled 'preview' or 'beta'. With hope, Will On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 10:07 PM, stevep <[email protected]> wrote: > My $0.02 cents (old model, $0.08 new Google estimate, $1.00 other user > estimates). > > Having done a lot of work in finance for a large tech company, my main > disappointment with the new pricing is the me-too approach from > Google. Great engineering, but very lax with respect to innovation for > the whole product. In this case pricing. > > GAE had promised more of an activity-based model. Great I thought, an > application of Activity Based Costing to a business. ABC is truly a > gift for businesses WTR good decision making. However, the discipline > needed to apply it often goes lacking. The main area where the lack of > discipline applies is upper management decision making. ABC is a > disciplined approach to running your business. It lays bare good > operations, and forces poor management decisions into the open -- > which is why upper managers hate it. Anyway, enough theory. > > Here's the example the applies to GAE. The $0.01 charge per 10,000 > files. For nearly the entire time I've been in this forum, I've heard > Ikai and others describe the efficiency and sophistication of GAE > content delivery network. "Use static files because of our great > efficiency" or something like that. Unless I'm mistaken, there is > nothing that would suggest using ABC that the number of files drives > costs at $0.01 per 10K. > > Another take on this is a question someone asked long ago in the > forums about why static files bandwidth charges under High Replication > got the higher bandwidth charge when the system used to deliver the > bandwidth is THE SAME system used for Master/Slave. Never answered of > course. > > The penny per 10K files is simply Google lazily looking at AWS and > saying, "Hey, this is how we can really juice the profit, and compare > well with AWS." The problem with these types of decisions that the > pricing system becomes arbitrary, and guided ultimately by board-room > decisions rather than operating discipline. > > I'm happy that GAE is upping its pricing as it is a clear indication > that this may become a viable P/L driven business. However, seeing > this type of mee-too-ism in the pricing area rather than something > such as the original promise from GAE strongly suggests that Google > sees little value in hiring great accountants in addition to great > engineers is disappointing. I say that having been part of Hewlett > Packard during its great years in InkJet printers where things like > ABC delivered incredible value for consumers, and then seeing that > morph into a company that stopped being disciplined, and started to > think solely about how to juice its quarterly profits. Google is > simply coming out the gates appearing like the sad shell of a company > I left. Larry suggests he's not a quarterly-profit focused guy, but > this pricing tells me that he doesn't understand how things like > taking the simple route on pricing decisions because you don't think > great decision-based accounting systems are important MAKES YOUR > ORGANIZATION LAX. > > </rant mode> > > Still happy, and somewhat trustful of GAE. Sorry to see that the > pricing decisions look mostly like "...this compares well to AWS." Oh > well. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Google App Engine" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en.
