Taking on Amazon, Google launches EC2 rival Compute Engine

http://gigaom.com/cloud/taking-on-amazon-google-launches-compute-on-demand-rival-to-ec2/

by hrayr • 14 years ago

40 8 14 years ago

mtgx• 14 years ago

Why is Apple's iCloud being mentioned in the same sentence with Compute Engine and EC2? That's like putting Google Drive in there, too.

hrayr• 14 years ago

Right, and they conveniently forgot to mention Rackspace. I highly doubt Apple is going to release a direct competitor to EC2 or the like; unless they can turn a service into a consumer product, Apple is not going to waste their time with it.

dchest• 14 years ago

Because cloud.

aaronsw• 14 years ago

Hmm, looks like they're competing directly on price:

1 virtual core, 1.7GB RAM, 160GB disk for $.055/hr (Google)

1 virtual core, 1.7GB RAM, 160GB disk for $.08/hr (Amazon)

Amazon is still much cheaper if you use reserved instances or spot pricing, though. And for these sorts of compute jobs, I'm not sure why you wouldn't use spot pricing.

ChuckMcM2• 14 years ago

This is part of what I find amazing. Google and Amazon and every other 'EC' vendor looks to 'lock in' the price per 'equivalent compute unit'. What that means is that when Intel gets 50% more performance the EC vendor gets 50% more profit as they don't lower their price. For a user of cloud services it means that your cost to deliver your product will only go 'up' with features. In the past a large number of players have been able to deliver additional features at the same cost because they just upgraded to faster hardware.

The economics of this move starts pouring dollars into the EC providers and puts upward price pressure on web services. This 'price ratchet', if widely adopted, it going to put a huge kink in the productivity gains we've seen over the last 10 years as folks have ridden the commodity compute bandwagon. We've seen previews of that when people who used AppEngine got bit by the big price increases. Its like commuters who are forced to give up their income to the the gas pump, elastic compute resources are the 'gas' of the 21st century.

genwin• 14 years ago

Hopefully competitive forces will sort that out. There will be an incentive for price per 'equivalent compute unit' to be lowered as the underlying infrastructure costs decrease.

hoodoof• 14 years ago

Thank goodness for competition. Now maybe we'll see better performance from Amazon EC2 servers. A return to Moore's law maybe.

Taking on Amazon, Google launches EC2 rival Compute Engine

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