I would like to hear what platform bits of AWS that you find lacking in Google Cloud. Google's ecosystem of fully managed services is very rich broad and compelling, and in many ways far ahead of competition.

(work on Google Cloud but don't get paid to post here)

For me the two big things missing from Google Cloud are a PostgreSQL service and a Redis service. I'd also need an alternative to CodeDeploy, but I think I could something that wouldn't be too terrible to self-host.

> in many ways far ahead of competition

Yep. In my experience, when Google Cloud does something, they do it right.

Thanks for your feedback!

Managed Postgres.

Hit me up offline - this is one gap Google's had, I admit. On the other hand, you've always been able to run managed postgres through a partner.

Let me know if there are any others that you feel strongly about?

For those devs who need to convince senior management and big clients “managed by a partner“ does not cut it. They want to hear a reliable name like Amazon or Google. A small unfamiliar brand doesn't give them confidence on reliability front. Many of these people have paid to MS and Oracle just for this purpose. For example on Google's G Suite FAQ there is a big document which details out the elaborate measures Google takes on security front and about no unauthorized access to data. It's unlikely that a smaller third party partner will have same diligence as that of Google or Amazon.

I do not remember to have read about Google equivalent of EFS yet. This can make it relatively easy to migrate legacy apps to cloud.

And as the other comment says above, familiarity. We have around 20 programmers at our company who are comfortable managing deployments on AWS. We had to spend a lot of time and money on their training. Google hasn't given the 10x reason for us to switch.

Well, there's always IBM: https://www.compose.com/postgresql

I hear you, this is all good feedback.

Why hit you up offline?

I don't want some 3rd party to manage Postgres. I want something seemless like RDS.

I also found that it's easier to launch an Elastic Beanstalk Docker app with a Postgres RDS instance. I'm hoping Google's Flexible Environment will address this, but I was not able to get it to deploy. To be fair, I only tried for a bit yesterday and gave up.

It'd be great if you can share how to best spin up a managed Postgres instance.

I'm using GKE and it has been working like a charm so far.

What should I hit you up offline about?

Nothing. This is just a tactic to "silence" critics.

I'm actually offering direct dialogue. A few folks emailed me already, and I encourage you to as well. This is my idea of a peaceful Sunday:)

Direct Connect

Cloud Interconnect is the equivalent to this on GCP.

No, that is not correct. Direct Connect is a superset of functionality to Cloud Interconnect. Specifically, RFC 1918 networks over BGP on physical links are missing from Cloud Interconnect. Google engineers have a plan for this functionality and a code name. No date estimate has been made available (at least to us).

Ah! You're correct. Sorry about that!

Even when the comparison is with a web-hosting provider such as GoDaddy or Digital Ocean? I want to host a few custom developed web apps on a VPS and I'm confused between AWS and DO/GoDaddy. Which one would you suggest?

Web apps on VPS sounds like something fit for micro or tiny instances, in which case a month pre-commitment might actually be cheaper if you look at OVH's Kimsufi programme: https://www.kimsufi.com/en/vps-ssd.xml. These are cheap, but in my experience reliable (after multiple suboptimal experiences with DO) KVMs.

While KS is probably more important for EU customers, the KS-VPS line has three regions to choose from: Gravelines (Northern France), Strasbourg (Eastern France) or Beauharnois (North-America). You can also DIY your own cloud with https://www.ovh.ie/vps/vps-cloud.xml, though I've never tested this.

Personal point: I may be very old-fashioned, but after using GCE and AWS for various tasks, I still prefer the transparency of pre-committed billing. E.g., I don't know if this changed by now, but I ran into dozens of inexplicable administration errors with GCE, to the point where I couldn't manage my own projects anymore. Plus, after creating billing details, I couldn't detach my credit card from the platform. The only way around that was to disable all projects, but that still left me with an uneasy feeling.

I don't have automatic billing setup for KS/OHV. I get billing reminders 30/15/7 days before each cycle and authorize each payment.

DO is more comparable to AWS than GoDaddy.

Essentially a VPS provider is someone who rents you a server instance on a much larger server running other instances of other people's servers. You are in complete control of your server instance. You have to manage all the application installations, firewalls, security, etc.

A GoDaddy or Bluehost is someone who gives you folder space on a server. They have the web server, database, and any other application all setup for you already. Typically those types of providers only allow you to serve static content, or certain scripting languages (mostly PHP).

It depends what stack you wrote your web apps with for which provider you should go with. With a VPS, Linode is going to be cheaper than Digital Ocean, which in turn is cheaper than AWS when you compare specs to specs. If you're app is a simple PHP app that talks to a database, you could probably host it way cheaper on GoDaddy or Bluehost. You just wouldn't have very much control over all the different versions of the DB/PHP, etc. that you might want.

I would suggest a DO droplet since the learning curve is very small compared to the AWS services, the cost is predictable and they have a decent bandwidth allowance.

If you want to compare for prices, just search for "VPS with hourly billing" and you should find some alternatives to DO which may be worth considering.

And if you want to dig deeper, I have written a book [1] which I hope can clear the confusion and give you a better idea of what hosting you need for your apps.

[1]: https://www.hostingforappdevelopers.com/

This. Some of my clients are on one of the spectrum with lots of PaaS offering in use especially features such as queues. Others prefer to be agnostic and won't use any specific features. I guess it depends on what you want and how comfortable you are administering Rabbit etc.

We use many services on AWS (S3, ELB, RDS, RedShift...). The costs of the EC2 instances is > 70% of the total bill. It's in the same order for the other deployments I've seen.

The thing is, the AWS pricing strategy is global and most services are built on top of instances.