Google Storage Now Available To Developers(code.google.com) |
Google Storage Now Available To Developers(code.google.com) |
5 years to clone a product that Google already has the infrastructure for and is within Google's core mission seems excessively long.
* who, even worse for their case, already had the infrastructure, resources, engineers, etc. to get it done.
The ACL scheme is significantly more flexible on GS. In fact, one of the two major problems I have with S3 is a non-issue on GS:
1. All files on S3 are not world-readable when they are first uploaded. You cannot change the default permission for a file uploaded to a bucket. On GS you can set the default ACL on a bucket to world-readable.
2. For me, the most incredible thing GS could do right now is add a callback API. I want it to notify my application when my bucket is updated, webhooks style.
With both 1 & 2 in place, you can build storage driven applications in the cloud that don't require constant polling. Man, that would sure be something.
http://code.google.com/apis/storage/docs/reference-uris.html
Due to Amazon's limitation of 100 buckets per account and the coupling between bucket name and CNAME, hosting files for our clients and supporting custom CNAMEs has not been possible for us. If we were to move to Google Storage, it would be.
http://code.google.com/apis/storage/docs/developer-guide.htm...
Afaik S3 can't do that.
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/11/amazon-s3-multipart-uploa...
S3: $0.140 per GB (at the most expensive rate) vs. Google: $0.17 per GB (at their only listed rate)
The rest seems to be the same though.
The whole 'we've decided to kill that product, you've got 30 days to get your stuff back' and the 'we lost a switch or something and we'll be back online day after tomorrow' kinds of things are still concerns of course.
I've always been impressed at the prices Amazon could charge for S3 and keep it a going concern. I'd love to see the breakout on that revenue but I'm sure that isn't going to happen any time soon.
[1] http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE...
So if a bunch of people from Japan decide to download from your app, you are screwed.
1 - http://code.google.com/apis/storage/docs/gsutil.html#install
Dropbox isn't really a storage company (they're built on top of S3) their secret sauce is in the syncing.
Google's mission is "to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful."
Gmail helps my company organize our email and communication, and makes it accessible from any computer anywhere in the world.
S3 helps my company organize our information and distribute it around the world.
S3 helps dropbox organize their users information and make it accessible from any device.
An S3 clone is clearly within Google mission.
Google's mission is also to make money, companies make money by focusing on their core strengths. I would rather have Google not clone other people's products, Microsoft did that and they failed over and over again.
S3 may help you organize your information, but that information is probably not public, and if it is then Google's services can access it anyway - they also aren't a charity - if you're looking for charity (i.e. products released for the betterment of the world only) then you need to search for non-profits.
Also, don't forget bandwidth charges if e.g. some of your s3 access does not come from ec2.
You could add into the cost / GB of bandwidth to access the files, not as easy to factor into a TCO model in the personal use case.
The statement should say that startups with innovative, hard-to-reproduce products have nothing to fear; you'll either produce a product that they'll choose not to compete with/can't compete with (Twitter, Facebook) or get bought by them.
How many startups get killed because they can't compete with the big guys, though? Here's an example: http://family.go.com/assets/bubbleshare/
I find glowing reports about it from TechCrunch, then.... nothing, it just dies.
So what happened?
BubbleShare was a Toronto tech darling started by the always brilliant Albert Lai. They were WAY ahead of their time.
All I'm comfortable sharing here is that they received buyout Offer A, which Albert rejected in favour of doubling down for a better deal. Unfortunately fortune did not smile and BubbleShare ultimately accepted Offer B, which was significantly smaller than Offer A.
The site was sold to Kaboose, which is a Canadian family content company. As usually happens when startups are acquired, the key talent left (Albert started Kontagent) and innovation on the site halted.
I'm not an analyst, but these things usually distill down to "too early / too early / too late". I'm not sure that people were ever lining up to pay them money to use the service, and that might give you pause before going down the same road. Many products are cool but aren't solving a problem causing paying customers real pain.