I couldn't read all of it but I am giving you a +1 And about the wired magazine link, I thought I was the only one who insult people/companies with pretty urls, but theirs is very very harsh
On Jul 2, 8:22 am, zdravko <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi folks, > > With regard to the newly proposed GAE pricing changes and other > related issues ... > > IMHO, A this point the minimum honorable thing that GOOG could do is > to take a gradual phasing in approach along these lines: > > a) For the first 3 months, continue charging the old way, while in > parallel showing what the costs would amount to under the new scheme. > This would give everyone a chance to see what they will be facing and > a bit of time to do at least some initial tinkering and refactoring of > their apps. I would be surprised to learn that they have not already > been doing this sort of comparison. Otherwise, it would mean that > they did bulk analysis of resources vs revenues and that they > themselves have no idea how many customers will end up being > negatively impacted - in which case, it would be just as valuable for > them as it would be for their clients. > > b) Thereafter, they should start billing according to both schemes, > where in the first month the customer pays 90% of old & 10% of new > charges. The next month it would be 80/20 and so on. Furthermore, > they should ensure that for a full year, no customer ends up paying > more than twice the cost of what it would have been the old way. The > reason why they should do at least this much is to make up for *sucker > punching* everyone - which I will explain. > > GAE is not the only way by which GOOG has *sucker punched* the > developer community because they have already done the same thing with > the Translation API and just about all other "data retrieval" API. > The reason why I believe that they have *sucker punched* everyone is > because it turns out that they have done some quite amazing things, > either by design or with total disregard to its developer community > and/or with total disregard to some very basic realities. > > It is an economic reality that there was never a way for them to make > any money with any of the data retrieval or data "transformation" > API's such as Translation API. So, what were they thinking or were > they thinking at all, when they offered such services in the first > place? How did they ever hope to make such services economically > viable when such API services do not provide means for things such as > ad insertions? While GOOG has the right to make a profit with > everything that it does, it has *NO* right (not in the past, not now > and never in the future) to offer developers what amounted to a "free > lunch" because too many developers ended up investing their time and > effort, based on that silly "free lunch" premise. While many of us > developers are not too savvy when it comes to issues such as having > economically viable revenue models, GOOG on the other hand is lot more > sophisticated and it should have known better from the very beginning. > > When Translation API user community cried foul, GOOG knee-jerk reacted > with a promise that they will offer a paid subscription. Great !?! > NOT REALLY ! The problem is just that, in that it was a knee-jerk > reaction because most developers will not be able to generate enough > revenue to pay for such services - no matter what they price it at. > There is a solution that apparently they have not even considered. > They could have helped those developers in ways by which the > developers could have displayed advertising within their apps and with > that ad revenue, maybe they could end up covering at least their > costs. However, even with that there would be a huge problem because > GOOG seems to do nothing that does not scale well without requiring > lots of human intervention such as reviewing apps for compliance, etc. > > Here is a really fantastic article which deals with some of these > "automated scalability" > issues.http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/mf_larrypage/all/1 > > When all is said and done, has GOOG even bothered to come out and > state how much more revenue are they trying to generate with the new > pricing scheme. Is it 10% or 50% or 100% or 500% or more? If they > stated that much and if they gave us 3 months of new billing data > (before new billing kicks in) then everyone would be able to see if > they are edge case exceptions or whether they fall in-line to that > stated average revenue increase goals. > > Now, while they have either been totally irresponsible or perhaps they > just made a callous revenue projection mistakes, the problem is that > they are evidently continuing to do more of the same with the "free" > quota offerings. The fact of life is that while there is no "free > lunch", GOOG continues to make believe the developer community that > there is. It would be interesting to know just how much of the > overall resources are being eaten by their "free" offerings. In other > words, how much of that "free lunch" is factored into the new pricing > and with that, how much of GOOG's research and development (yes, > research into what types of apps can be economically viable) and how > much of their overall business development is being funded by the > proposed pricing increases? > > If I did not know any better or if I did not have too much faith in > GOOG thus far, I might be inclined to think that most of this mess was > by design - by which they used the developer community to do just that > - to flush out and even to poach great ideas that had no hope on their > own but core of which would indeed be viable within GOOG itself. > Please tell me that I am totally wrong, before real disillusionment > sets in. > > Sincerely, > zdravko -- 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.
