
Google's BigTable Costs 10 Times Less than Amazon's SimpleDB - pbnaidu
http://highscalability.com/biggest-under-reported-story-googles-bigtable-costs-10-times-less-amazons-simpledb
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boucher
This claim is ridiculous. Amazon's pricing is clearly designed to get you to
store as much structured data as possible in S3, and simply to store
references to that data in SimpleDB. If you follow that model, the pricing is
very similar.

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DocSavage
That isn't a claim, it's a simple observation that SimpleDB costs about ten
times more than Google's datastore. You are absolutely right that SimpleDB is
best used to return pointers to S3 data objects, and both the article and
comments point out that actual costs depend on usage patterns. (Bandwidth
costs will probably override database storage costs for many use cases.)
Still, all the above doesn't change the fact that Google's distributed
datastore is about a tenth the cost of Amazon's. You're just saying it doesn't
matter in many usage scenarios.

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boucher
Well, no, this is still misleading. One specific portion of the service costs
10x more, not the whole service. Furthermore, its the one part of the service
that Amazon doesn't really expect you to use (hence the price).

As you said, storage is not likely to be the most expensive part of your
database anyway, so _claiming_ "Google's BigTable Costs 10 Times Less than
Amazon's SimpleDB" is misleading at best.

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DocSavage
Well, no, it's still accurate. Amazon's SimpleDB is a separate service. If you
are trying to store a very large number of relatively small objects, like
sessions or digg-like data, the S3 pricing doesn't come into it. Once again,
it's not a claim that Google's datastore is a tenth the price of Amazon's
SimpleDB. It's simple observation. If you want to say "Using Amazon data
services is as cheap or cheaper than Google AppEngine" or add other services
to the comparison, that's your prerogative. But the comparison of pricing for
two services is not a claim and it's certainly not "ridiculous."

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boucher
Claim: "Google's BigTable Costs 10 Times Less than Amazon's SimpleDB".

Fact: Structured data storage on BigTable costs 10 times less than structured
data storage in SimpleDB.

Those two statements are not the same. Implying they are is very disingenuous.

"But the comparison of pricing for two services is not a claim"

Using one of four different factors (completely ignoring S3, which in and of
itself isn't exactly fair) to compare pricing is making a claim that isn't
supported by the evidence. _If_ you provided a typical actual breakdown of
storage costs versus access costs, and then used the total differences in
price structure to arrive at a comparison price, _then_ could make a claim
about the comparison between the pricing for both services that was actually
based on facts.

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SwellJoe
I'm not sure I follow the math.

How does one multiply to get less? 10 times 1 is 10. So, what exactly is "10
times 1 less"? Is it like a negative exponent? 1 to the -10 power? That would
be less, but I've never heard anyone say "times" in reference to an exponent.

I'm worrying too much over this, aren't I?

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cperciva
_1 to the -10 power? That would be less_

Well, no... 1^(-10) is still just 1. :-)

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SwellJoe
"Well, no... 1^(-10) is still just 1. :-)"

OK, so I'm innumerate in the middle of the night, as well.

