I should say one thing more - I've already had to migrate one service off of Backends (formerly "servers") to a VPS host because the finalized pricing (not hypothetical - what you pay right now) is more than six times what it costs elsewhere. The risk of being priced off GAE is real.
Jeff On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 9:51 PM, Jeff Schnitzer <[email protected]> wrote: > I think you're missing out on the bigger picture, which is that: > > 1) High-level decisionmakers inside Google are reading this thread. > > 2) Early input has greater potential influence than later input, > especially after a ton of billing code has been written and the > "momentum" of a big ship like Google has been established. > > 3) We here, right now, we're the focus group. There is no better time > to speak up about your concerns. The chances of your fears > materializing are much higher if you don't ask about them. "Wait and > see" is a recipe for disappointment (in life). > > We've already seen one major change (half-price Python) which is a > tacit acknowledgement that the single-threaded model may be a > significant problem. My goal by "bellyaching" is not to haggle the > lowest possible price out of appengine, but to get a competitive, > sustainable, cost-effective platform that makes both Google's > accountants and my accountants (and my clients' accountants) happy. > There are two risks - one is that Google unsustainably underprices > appengine, the other is that Google unsustainably overprices > appengine. If it turns out that because of low levels of concurrency > these two overlap, we *all* have very big problems. > > In my mind, the biggest risk to the success of GAE is an architectural > issue that you and I have no control over. The new pricing model is > largely symptomatic of a deeper problem, and it won't do Google any > good if the sustainable price is so high that the market flees. An > instance on GAE may cost the same per hour as an "instance" somewhere > else, but of that other instance can do 10X the work in the same hour, > the market will eventually figure out that GAE isn't a very good deal. > > By the way, I *do* run several VPS servers with non-GAE projects - > some of which predate my love affair with appengine. It's a fixed > outlay, but has the advantage that I can stack additional projects on > it for nearly no marginal cost. It won't cost me an additional $9/mo > to build another project on it. > > At any rate, I place a lot of trust in the people behind appengine - > every one I've met has been super smart, engaged, and genuinely > interested in building what I still think is the coolest thing on the > internet. But they won't succeed in doing that without lots of > customer feedback, so bellyache (constructively) as loud as you can as > long as they're willing to listen... > > Jeff > > On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 8:16 PM, Greg <[email protected]> wrote: >> It seems to me that many people are losing sight of the fact that >> there will still be a free tier. >> >> So our proverbial web developer can tinker around with her app for as >> long as she wants, at no cost. Once SHE decides to, she can avail >> herself of scalability and an SLA for $9 a month, which seems very >> reasonable to me. >> >> If her app needs more resources and she can't afford $9 a month, then >> her app is not financially sustainable and will die. A shame, but it >> has to happen. Otherwise hundreds of thousands of unsustainable apps >> will consume infrastructure and support resources, and increase the >> cost for everyone else. >> >> To those still bellyaching over $9, maybe you should build your own >> server. Invest probably $1000 for hardware, $50 a month for internet >> connection, and however many hours it takes to manage the machine. And >> you can host all the other people's apps for free - or is it only >> Google who should give away app hosting for free? >> >> Or of course you could switch to AWS. Don't forget you'll need two >> instances in different regions for redundancy, and the cost of >> bandwidth between them to synchronise, and you still need to put in >> quite a lot of time managing it all... does $9 seem reasonable now? >> >> There is still a lot of dust in the air - we don't know how the new >> scheduler will work, and it may be that Python 2.7 and multiple >> threads suddenly makes everything ten times cheaper. We really don't >> know what the new costs will be until we get comparison billing. But >> after all is said and done, I'm still glad I built my apps on >> Appengine, and I'm glad Google are making it more commercially >> sustainable. >> >> -- >> 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.
