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Maybe this helps GCP as the leak now makes this reputational for GOOG. They’ll have to keep it running to prevent people leaving because of the leak so they’ll do something drastic like pledge 10 years of support or something.

This is what has always terrified me about GCP. The business mode wasn’t there so I haven’t done anything serious since they killed/overhauled app engine years ago (aws seems to always make stuff better and I think Microsoft has bet the whole company on azure).

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It always seems to me Google won the Search Engine battle, ads became their revenue source, and that is it. Android came out of necessity and stupidity of Microsoft at the time.

Comparatively speaking they are incompetent both Technically and Manageability, compared to Amazon and Azure, or to better phase it compared to Jeff Bezos and Satya Nadella.

It remains to be seen now Google CEO Sundar Pichai, now also Alphabet CEO will change. ( I could never understand how Google Cloud also had a CEO )

Google could very well be a one hit wonder. Coming from someone who works at a company with one successful product and many failed ones: Maybe they are too wealthy to want a second success. Life is cozy.

In addition to search I'd say:

  - Gmail

  - Android (and Google Play)

  - Drive

  - Maps

  - Chromecast

  - Google Home
  
  - YouTube (+Premium)

are super successful.

If the metric for success is revenue then, no, they are not by any sensible measure super successful. Their revenue combined it’s a small fraction of search/ads.

By that standard, practically all other companies are failures, since practically all other companies pale in comparison to Google search. So I would say your claim is absurd.

How much money have they made off of Chromecast?

I'm not sure, but as of 2017 55 million Chromecast devices had reportedly been sold:

https://venturebeat.com/2017/10/04/google-has-sold-55-millio...

Anecdotally it's pretty popular with folks I know in Columbus, OH - admittedly they tend to be on the tech savvy side.

Units sold != success. Moviepass had a heck of a sales run without ever being successful.

There's no evidence that YouTube is profitable[1]. In fact, there's no evidence any of this is profitable.

Android, Gmail, and Maps make money from ads, not from charging users directly. That makes them the same business as search.

Hardware businesses like Home and Chromecast usually aren't profitable, and Google (like Amazon) is likely using them to keep people in their ecosystem.

That leaves Drive, which might have some good margins, but they give it away for free to many users...

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/technology/youtube-financ...

Every day that Youtube exists without competitors it further solidifies itself as the only video platform like itself that will exist.

Gmail makes money from business users and I would go as so far to say that if it doesn't make more money that Drive now it will make more money in 10 years from people who have lived their entire lives inside of a gmail account using it for business.

Gmail makes money from enterprises that use Gsuite.

It said in the article G Suite might account for the bulk of Google Clouds revenue, since its combined in their financial reports with the infrastructure stuff and G Suite is extremely popular.

> Maybe this helps GCP as the leak now makes this reputational for GOOG.

Nope. Engineers know this product is dead. There's no way they'll risk their time and money on something Google doesn't believe in. We've been bitten time and time again, and adopting GCP is about the riskiest move you can make: hitching your entire project to a dying technology platform.

Since no one will be willing to make this gamble, GCP's growth rate will flatline. Exactly the condition Google said would cause them to shutter it. Self-fulfilling prophecy. Their platform just died today.

It's sad, because Spanner is actually really cool tech.

I bet Google engineers and PMs on GCP are reading this right now and already thinking about their future within the company.

In the future, we'll probably be able to look back at today as a major shift in strategy for Google.

Yup, best time to eat at Jack n' the Box is right after the ecoli scare.

>pledge 10 years of support or something.

Totally gonna believe them

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