The funny thing is, I think Google, and a lot of other people, have forgotten what Cloud Computing was started for. It was because large companies (like Google) had a lot of hardware which is necessary to handle the loads their services require, but which don't always work at full capacity. They spend varying amounts of time idle.
The idea was to A) allow people to utilize this idle time for something productive, and B) allow said Big Company to recoup some costs associated with powering and maintaining all of this hardware which isn't being utilized 100%. key word is 'recoup'. It seems to me a lot of companies are looking to 'cash in' rather than 'recoup'. The hardware and infrastructure is sitting there, effectively 'for free' because Google requires it to run it's business. Charging anything more that what it costs to develop and maintain the API and associated administration is going beyond this for the profit motive, plain and simple. All of the hardware/electricity/ Network Administration is already being paid for (in spades) by all of the profits Google reaps from all of it's various enterprises, that all run off the same machinery. The question is, is this what Google is doing? Is the pricing beyond what it costs to make GAE available to the public? I don't think anyone knows, except Google. But I wouldn't be surprised if they have lost sight of the original motivation for all of this was, Conservation, not Profit. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To post to this group, send email to google-appengine@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to google-appengine+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en.
