Hacker News Reader

Comment by magduf | Hacker News Reader

>Going from $550 to $14,500 per month is totally unacceptable.

Wrong. It's completely acceptable. It's their business, and this is the risk you take when you make your business dependent on another business.

>This is exactly why I'll always be wary to depend on Google's services. And it isn't the first time they do this either. >First they monopolize the market via cheap rates and branding, then they make it exorbitantly expensive.

Google isn't the only company that does stuff like this. Almost any company would do this if they had the opportunity.

View on HN

This doesn't make it acceptable. It sounds like what you're proposing is that a company must build its own streets, electrical grid, telecom network, generation plants, etc.

Very few business would do well in such an environment.

No, he's saying that the business must weigh the cost of backups with the risk of needing them and determine if it is necesarry to fund creation of said backups.

You need to define "acceptable". I see this a lot: someone makes a bold statement saying "xyz isn't acceptable!!!" Why not? Who are they to make that pronouncement? And how exactly are they going to enforce this thing not being acceptable?

If Google raising prices obscenely "isn't acceptable", then what are YOU going to do about it? Nothing, right? Is Google going to change their ways because a few people proclaim "this isn't acceptable!"? No. Therefore, it IS acceptable.

I'm waiting to be proven wrong.... which will only happen if this price-raising is canceled, which I don't think it will be.

Also, I'll add that your comparison is apples-to-oranges. For the electrical part in particular, electric utilities in almost every country are highly regulated. They can't raise prices on a whim, even though they're monopolies; the government won't allow it. This doesn't apply to Google Maps. You're comparing services that are provided by a government, or are highly regulated, to a service that has governmental constraints whatsoever. If you don't like the price, don't buy it.

maybe intolerable is a better word.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com