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Re:What is Google doing with its open source teams? by klodolph on Saturday January 28, 2023 @02:10PM (#34560509)
IMO it makes perfect sense for Google to be in cloud. Cloud infrastructure services are a race to the bottom—storage, compute, etc. You get people into your ecosystem and upsell them on SaaS offerings that integrate with your IaaS offerings. You have to be able to scale without growing staff linearly, which is already Google’s model (although Apple and Amazon are better at it).

Google’s main problem IMO is the lack of customer focus. The products are good, the experience is not as good.

Re:What is Google doing with its open source teams? by Sunspark on Saturday January 28, 2023 @02:45PM (#34560945)
Google doesn't have the ability to speak with a customer at ALL. If there is a problem, basically the only recourse you have is to flail about on HN, Reddit or Twitter and hope that you are noticed by a random Google employee who feels sympathy for your plight and decides to try and help you.

The ONLY official channel they have where you can talk to someone that I am aware of, is sales and restricted to sales only.

This was probably a conscious decision they made, derp-derp if we eliminate everything we build value for the shareholder, except for the fact they didn't think it through all the way in the sense that they have competitors. Microsoft is also bad, but you can actually eventually get to an MS employee if there is a problem and MS does have official employees on Reddit to keep an eye on things, etc. So, if I was a business, I'd look to Microsoft first, NOT GOOGLE, because Google can't be trusted because they are just an automated chatbot with absolutely zero support.

I do use Google services, but I'd be frightened to rely on them for anything serious.

Re:What is Google doing with its open source teams? by johngalt_ on Saturday January 28, 2023 @03:12PM (#34561284)
Once I had an issue with a Google App Store (I paid for some app expensive subscription but did not get access) payment and got a pretty quick and efficient customer support. They were very polite, checked the issue, explained what happened, and offered some solution. Perharps they provide better support in my country due to customer protection laws or I just got lucky.
Re:What is Google doing with its open source teams? by granshaw on Saturday January 28, 2023 @07:01PM (#34563318)
Google Ads has full fledged customer service. I’m tempted to mention everyone’s favorite saying here, but won’t :)
Re:What is Google doing with its open source teams? by acdha on Saturday January 28, 2023 @09:01PM (#34564110)
When Google released Anthos, we were in the market for something along those lines for Kubernetes on our own hardware (policy requirements). Talked to our reps, asked for some quotes … nothing. Tried again. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing. This left everyone wondering what it'd be like if we (as an existing GCP customer) needed support for any reason.

The only company I've ever dealt with which was worse at taking your money was IBM. In both cases, it was eerily similar: you could get a room full of people to do a demo but the salespeople seemed to assume their reputation meant success was inevitable and they didn't have to actually do anything like … eeew … work to close deals. In neither case were we the biggest deal in town but also far from the smallest, and in both cases the experience meant they missed out on larger sales later.

Re:What is Google doing with its open source teams? by helpfulgoogler on Sunday January 29, 2023 @11:31AM (#34569650)
I think you may be misreading the situation. When Anthos was announced, it didn't exist yet. They didn't have anything to sell you and you weren't important enough to be trusted with that knowledge. In this regard, your comparison was probably apt (especially if you were inquiring about Watson).
Re:What is Google doing with its open source teams? by acdha on Sunday January 29, 2023 @11:40AM (#34569781)
Released, not announced - they actually contacted us about it and then ghosted when we asked for a quote. At the very least I’d have expected a simple “we’ll get back to you”.

IBM was similar: we were trying to buy Opteron servers, let our rep know, had a bunch of people show up, ended with them saying they’d send us a quote, no reply to multiple requests. Maybe they weren’t interested in mere 6 figure purchases but they could have said so.