Darien, I don't think that was the basic premise for cloud computing services. This has always been a new business opportunity than sharing unused computing.
http://www.quora.com/How-and-why-did-Amazon-get-into-the-cloud-computing-business Here Werner Vogels <http://www.quora.com/Werner-Vogels> CTO of Amazon explicitly refutes this myth. On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 12:43 PM, Darien Caldwell <[email protected] > wrote: > The funny thing is, I think Google, and a lot of other people, have > forgotten what Cloud Computing was started for. It was because large > companies (like Google) had a lot of hardware which is necessary to > handle the loads their services require, but which don't always work > at full capacity. They spend varying amounts of time idle. > > The idea was to A) allow people to utilize this idle time for > something productive, and B) allow said Big Company to recoup some > costs associated with powering and maintaining all of this hardware > which isn't being utilized 100%. > > key word is 'recoup'. It seems to me a lot of companies are looking > to 'cash in' rather than 'recoup'. The hardware and infrastructure is > sitting there, effectively 'for free' because Google requires it to > run it's business. Charging anything more that what it costs to > develop and maintain the API and associated administration is going > beyond this for the profit motive, plain and simple. All of the > hardware/electricity/ Network Administration is already being paid for > (in spades) by all of the profits Google reaps from all of it's > various enterprises, that all run off the same machinery. > > The question is, is this what Google is doing? Is the pricing beyond > what it costs to make GAE available to the public? I don't think > anyone knows, except Google. But I wouldn't be surprised if they have > lost sight of the original motivation for all of this was, > Conservation, not Profit. > > -- > 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.
