

Ask HN: Competing with Google while running on Google App Engine - TY

Google App Engine is a perfect deployment environment for my product. However, this product will directly compete with one of Google's own existing services.<p>Given this conflict I feel uneasy to deploy on my competitor's infrastructure. On the other hand, I really want to believe in Google's "Do no evil" motto and hope that they will not use this situation to their advantage if my product is successful. Am I naive to believe in this?<p>Fundamentally, do you think that Google can be trusted to be an impartial infrastructure provider for services that compete with their own?<p>Many thanks in advance,<p>TY
======
vaksel
on the other hand there are a few advantages from it.

1\. if Google ever decides to acquire you, for them it'll be as easy as
flipping a switch.

2\. if Google ever screws with you...think of all the press you'll get

~~~
gfodor
Arguably the second point is an incentive to _deliberately_ launch Google
competitors on GAE :)

------
eklitzke
I wouldn't worry about it too much. If you consider Google Apps, Google is
already hosting email, documents, spreadsheets, etc. for a lot of businesses,
including many that compete with Google in one way or another (after all,
Google has an awful lot of products). Furthermore, Google is a pretty large
organization, so it seems like it would be risky for them to try to spy on you
(since it would involve a number of people in at least two or three
departments). If they got caught doing this, it would be pretty damaging to
GAE.

I think a more interesting consideration is, how does this affect the
prospects for your company to be acquired at a future date (assuming you're
interested in selling out)? Presumably hosting on GAE would make your company
an easier acquisition target for Google (since you've already bought into
their infrastructure). Presumably it would also make you less attractive to a
lot of other companies who might be competing with Google, since you're
basically going to be stuck on the GAE platform, and those companies may be
more paranoid.

Just my 2c.

------
bretpiatt
I wouldn't waste anytime thinking Google will be malicious to you if you're
hosted on GAE and in competition with them.

If GAE is the best platform for you to host, if it lets you get to market
sooner, if it lets you scale cost with revenue better then use it.

------
versesane
Worry only if you get successful ... It going to take a while. Make sure your
code is easily portable in a hosting env.

------
nir
I'd say ignore the evil/not issue and just assume that Google, like any
company, ultimately serve their own interests. If you plan to compete with
them on search/ads/maps/gmail/etc, you might not want to be too vulnerable. If
it's on a less critical part of their business, the damaged reputation to GAE
is probably not worth it to them.

In any case, outside the ORM your code can be plain Django, portable to non-
GAE hosts.

------
FredSource
The level of difficulty for Google to do cross department sabotage would be
high and I imagine the cost of damage to Google would be WAY higher than the
value of taking down your service (unless you are wildly successful - and then
it would be a lawyers party!)

Focus on success first -- and think about your "exit paths" -- and the
costs/benefits of being on GAE vs. another option as an independent decision.

------
TY
Thanks all for the replies!

I'm leaning towards using GAE at this point, with a contingency plan to switch
to a third party (most likely AWS) if needed. I do hope that the wall that
separates App Engine team is high enough and Google has internal controls to
prevent anyone from peering into our data. We don't compete with any of
Google's core products (search, email and etc).

Benefits of GAE are compelling enough for a scrappy startup to use it, even
with all the reservations. What attracts us to GAE is:

\- opportunity to concentrate on the product and not worry about
administration

\- this translates into tangible savings for a bootstrapped company, as we
don't have to hire sys admins

\- it's easy to leave if we must:

\- our product is being written in a generic framework and all GAE-specific
functionality is abstracted in a separate module.

\- Google does not lock in the data: since release 1.2.5, it's now possible to
bulk export data out of GAE

\- low starting costs

I'll keep HN posted about the progress.

------
mark_l_watson
If your app is written with Java + JDO, then with some effort it should be
portable. I've seen JDO backends of relational databases, Hadoop Hbase, ODF,
JSON,etc. I don't have a lot of experience with Python appengine development,
but I believe that you can exit from that platform also, with some effort.

------
pg
Yes, I'd trust them.

~~~
amock
Why would you trust them? It seems like a good business decision to not cause
any problems for him, but it doesn't seem like there is any reason to trust
them.

~~~
pg
Because even if Google's management were secretly evil, the employees are
independent minded enough that they wouldn't stand for any dishonest behavior.
That was the tradeoff Google made in order to be able to hire the smartest
people.

~~~
1010011010
It's true. Googlers openly use competitors' products and services when they
are perceived to be better. There are lots of Flickr users at Google, for
example. Googlers choose iPhones and blackberries if they want. They use
PayPal. They would riot if google tried to give itself an artificial advantage
or sabatoge a competitor. Competitors are embraced.

------
protomyth
If you know that you are going to be directly competing with a corporation, it
is incumbent on you to minimize the risk said corporation can interfere with
your business. A motto is not a promise or corporate conduct.

------
koenbok
If you build for appengine, you have options. Take a look at
<http://code.google.com/p/typhoonae/>.

PS. I'm sure you know what you're doing, but from my experience the gae stack
is really bad to build anything search at this point.

------
keefe
run run run away? seriously... think it through. app engine is relatively
equivalent to ec2. why not just eliminate this variable and switch unless it
is cost prohibitive?

------
kloncks
It certainly makes Google acquiring you that much easier :)

------
oscardelben
Make sure that you are not violating their TOS tough.

------
1010011010
You can.

