A Google Amazon Balancing Act
June 10, 2008
CNet featured an essay by Charles Cooper. You can read it here. Click the link quickly. I continue to receive emails from people telling me my links are dead. Some sites move stories around; others just delete them. The title–“Google’s Right but Cloud Computing Timeline Isn’t So Clear–is the type that catches my attention, but the core information really hooked me.
Mr. Cooper references a talk by Googler Rishi Chandra at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. You can read the CNet write up of Mr. Chandra’s presentation here. The main point of the Googler’s remarks is that cloud computing is the future. That’s an old message, but in the spring and summer Google transparency offensive of 2008, it’s becoming clear that Google believes in network computing. Okay. Maybe this is old news. The implication is that Google is serious about the enterprise market. Okay. Also old news. Mr. Cooper describes Mr. Chandra’s revelations and insights in an objective manner. I don’t think I could have done that were I reporting on the Googler’s talk.
Mr. Cooper does an excellent job of summarizing the Google “game plan”, and I won’t attempt to summarize his clear, tight writing.
But the payload of this must-read article is that Mr. Chandra made a gentle reference to the reliability of certain cloud-based services. When I saw this, my radar lit up. After years of ignoring Amazon’s push into services and features that are easy for Google to deliver, Google seems to be jerking its Googzilla-sized self into action. Amazon is making an effort to out Google Google at a fraction of the amount that Google spends on technology. Amazon, based on my research, is doing cloud computing on a very abstemious sum that is about one fifth of Google’s. My accountant father would be proud of Mr. Bezos’ penny pinching. I’m from a different generation, and I learned in the nuclear power work I did in the early 1970s that it pays to engineer certain functions without cutting corners. A flawed infrastructure is bad news in a BWR (boiling water reactor) and not-so-good news in a cloud-computing system.
For me, this single passing reference translates to increased pressure from the Google enterprise team. In the column I submitted to KMWorld which will run in either July or August 2008, I describe how “Google physics” work. Imagine my delight when Mr. Cooper provided additional information to buttress my analysis. I’m not going to explain “Google physics” in this post. You will have to wait until the KMWorld publication becomes available, but you can deduce that when the pressure goes up, the competitive arena behaves differently. The GOOG may be cranking up the heat now.
Kudos, Mr. Cooper. I appreciate a thorough reporting job.
Stephen Arnold, June 10, 2008
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