I talked to various developers from a few retail stores a few years ago and they said their companies are absolutely terrified of Amazon. Developers would be happy to use AWS but they are not allowed because it would be giving business to Amazon.
But when there is fear, there is opportunity. So Google is using that opportunity here. Not a bad move. Walmart is on-board as well it seems.
Saw news about Microsoft partnering with Amazon recently for some machine learning API. But wouldn't Microsoft compete with Amazon too? Though wonder if they are more worried about Google, "enemy of my biggest enemy is my friend" kind of thing.
AWS is going to work better for a lot of people, no doubt. However, this is good for those people as well. Google opening up this kind of offering really puts the pressure on Amazon to improve the quality of all the AWS stuff. Competition is good. I'd really like to see one more BIG player in this market. I would guess Microsoft is probably going to be next, since they've already started with a SQL Server offering.
Yep. Amazon search has built that trust of Amazon (although plenty of retail companies refuse to use AWS because of the retail competition). But there was a time when Google was universally the coolest company in the room - and I'd be interested to see how deep the trust well goes with amazon. The one thing with amazon you can trust is that they want to make money, and cloud makes them money, so they're at least not gonna pull the plug on you.
I can't speak to Amazon, but at Microsoft the equivalents to the Google offering are going to have the same OSS competitors. Having worked on services there, the only thing I really miss is Kusto; it's now available as an Azure service, but I'm at a company all in on AWS :(
I get the concern, but Amazon is very aware that they can't do anything non-competitive with AWS to help its other business. Netflix (who undoubtedly has a long-term contract) still hosts there.
The home field advantages companies have been getting away with lately tend to be tighter integrations (think Chromecast, Android, and Chrome). The only company that would pull something as bad as what's being feared is Oracle.
Going by the recent discussions about anti-competitive practices employed by Amazon against incumbents in any space that are hosted on AWS I'm not sure this concern is overblown. There's a reason some major competitors to Amazon (Walmart) refuse to do business with companies that host their stuff on AWS. At first I thought it was just being a sore loser, now I'm starting to understand it.
That was where I saw it. It seems the market is balancing, rather than AWS pulling away, with YoY growth better for Google than for Microsoft and both better than Amazon:
If Wal-Mart decrees this, put up or shut up. Welcome to business.
CEO Diktats about using not using competitor services for anything whatsoever, are as old as Microsoft. Wal-mart is not in the cloud business, so I can only wonder if, as others have commented, it is about data security in AWS domain, since Wal-Mart's main competitor is Amazon.
We know what Google and Facebook get up to with peoples data, why would Amazon not analyze or try similar to their customers? To have all that technical capability and not be curious about stuff would be a waste.
Finally, I think it would be great for everyone (except Amazon), if wal-mart got in to the cloud. Using their leverage to create cheaper cloud would benefit us all.
Competition is always healthy, but its going to be pretty tough for Google to launch something that makes our startup move away from AWS or Rackspace. EBS would be the main service to attack of Amazons.
But Amazon only competes with Google and Microsoft. Both have high margins in their non-cloud products, and are probably not interested in reducing those margins.
Amazon has many retail competitors. Maybe they have pricing power in AWS, but otherwise, I do not see evidence of them having control of the retail goods market.
Even for AWS, they have Microsoft and Google as competitors and a few other companies too.
Any large business that's remotely in competition with Amazon corp is (rightfully) scared by Amazon's use of marketplace sellers' data to compete with them, and don't host on AWS, because they're afraid of Amazon using AWS data(that they have complete access to) to compete with them. So this goes for almost all retailers, grocery stores etc.
Yes. But, Amazon is known for their customer service, even in the AWS space. Google is not.
If Google wants to succeed in certain spaces, they need to commit to them for a duration, and evangelize them. I don't see them doing that anywhere as well as Amazon does with AWS.
Not even going to try it on principle. Amazon is a big tentacled octopus thats tightening its grasp over any and every area it can. Lets leave Amazon for ecommerce and AWS.
To me, there is a very interesting contrast to be had between this announcement and Microsoft's announcement: it feels like Microsoft is discovering the business value of being open at the same time that Amazon is living in the time warp of proprietary everything. Has Microsoft internalized that open source is (or can be) a differentiator in the cloud? Amazon is clearly still oblivious to it -- and it will be very interesting to see if this service generates fear of vendor lock-in...
Looks to me that Amazon are serious about the cloud and their hosting/database products. Amazon are good at making a business out of affordable margins.
Google are keen to engage with early adopters and see where that engagement takes them but show little sign of committing to being a long term service provider of this sort.
> there remains a huge opportunity long squandered by Google: to be the enterprise platform that competes with Microsoft’s integrated offering by effectively tying together best-of-breed independent SaaS offerings into a cohesive whole.
I understand what he is saying, but AWS is already there. Azure may be on the rise but no platform comes close to AWS in the SaaS space as of now.
Amazon have a history of physical products, from the ill-fated fire phone to all of their Alexa products, kindles, and fire stick. They own a significant gaming division which recently launched the MMORPG New Worlds.
It seems the only thing they currently lack is their own VR headset. But they have their hooks in enterprise already, a massive computing infrastructure, experience in almost every related tech and an army of independent devs familiar with their offerings.
But when there is fear, there is opportunity. So Google is using that opportunity here. Not a bad move. Walmart is on-board as well it seems.
Saw news about Microsoft partnering with Amazon recently for some machine learning API. But wouldn't Microsoft compete with Amazon too? Though wonder if they are more worried about Google, "enemy of my biggest enemy is my friend" kind of thing.
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