
Introducing Network Service Tiers - ropiku
https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/08/introducing-Network-Service-Tiers-your-cloud-network-your-way.html
======
_7iun
A long standing complaint of mine is that Cloud egress pricing severely limits
the usefulness of compute. If I want to say process some visual effects on a
large (1TB) ProRes video, I might spend $1 on the compute but $100 on the
egress getting it back.

Unfortunately these changes don't really resolve that problem. "Standard"
pricing is a paltry 20% less. That 1TB video egress still costs $80 and for
that price I can rent a beefy server with a dedicated gigabit pipe for a
month.

Why is "Cloud" bandwidth so damned expensive?

I'd love a "best effort" or "off peak" tier. I imagine Google's pipes are
pretty empty when NA is asleep and my batch jobs aren't really going to care.

~~~
rb808
I was going to back up my photos to AWS Glacier before noticing that retrieval
costs are multiple times the storage cost. I guess that is possibly OK for a
backup but scared me into a physical alternative.

[http://liangzan.net/aws-glacier-calculator/](http://liangzan.net/aws-glacier-
calculator/)

~~~
vgt
Check out Google's Coldline

[https://cloud.google.com/storage/archival/](https://cloud.google.com/storage/archival/)

~~~
yeahokwhatever
Google Glacier, aka G2. I checked it out.

I like that I don't have to do calculus to understand how I'll be billed, or
write my own retrieval software.

~~~
Johnny555
AWS has greatly simplified their Glacier pricing from the inscrutable transfer
rate pricing to more common sense latency based pricing.

If you want your data back in < 5 minutes it's $0.03/GB, 3 - 5 hours,
$0.01/GB, 5 - 12 hours, $0.0025/GB

AWS Glacier is cheaper per month than Google ColdStorage, but Google doesn't
charge more for faster access to your data. So maybe you still need that
Calculus to figure out which is a better deal for your data access pattern.

~~~
ValentineC
This does not include standard AWS egress pricing, which is something like
$92/TB.

~~~
Johnny555
Right, and it doesn't include standard GCE egress pricing, which is something
like $120/TB.

[https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing](https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing)

~~~
Veratyr
Given TFA, it's probably more accurate to say $85/TB:
[https://cloud.google.com/network-
tiers/pricing](https://cloud.google.com/network-tiers/pricing)

~~~
Johnny555
Does that apply to storage egress? The storage pricing page lists only one
network tier:

[https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing](https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing)

------
pbbakkum
A few notes here:

\- An unmentioned alternative to this pricing is that GCP has a deal with
Cloudflare that gives you a 50% discount to what is now called Premium pricing
for traffic that egresses GCP through Cloudflare. This is cheaper for Google
because GCP and Cloudflare have a peering arrangement. Of course, you also
have to pay Cloudflare for bandwidth.

\- This announcement is actually a small price cut compared to existing
network egress prices for the 1-10 TiB/month and 150+ TiB/month buckets.

\- The biggest advantage of using private networks is often client latency,
since packets avoid points of congestion on the open internet. They don't
really highlight this, instead showing a chart of throughput to a single
client, which only matters for a subset of GCP customers. The throughput chart
is also a little bit deceptive because of the y-axis they've chosen.

\- Other important things to consider if you're optimizing a website for
latency are CDN and where SSL negotiation takes place. For a single small
HTTPS request doing SSL negotiation on the network edge can make a pretty big
latency difference.

\- Interesting number: Google capex (excluding other Alphabet capex) in both
2015 and 2016 was around $10B, at least part of that going to the networking
tech discussed in the post. I expect they're continuing to invest in this
space.

\- A common trend with GCP products is moving away from flat-rate pricing
models to models which incentivize users in ways that reflect underlying
costs. For example, BigQuery users are priced per-query, which is uncommon for
analytical databases. It's possible that network pricing could reflect that in
the future. For example, there is probably more slack network capacity at 3am
than 8am.

~~~
vgt
I like your thinking, but one minor clarification. BigQuery's actually
introduced Flat Rate [0] ( a year ago) and Committed Use Discounts [1] (Amazon
RIs are similar) since that's kind of what some Enterprises want. These are
optional and flexible.

I personally still hold that pay-per-use pricing is the cloud native approach
[2], the most cost-efficient, and the most customer-friendly. However, it's
unfamiliar and hard to predict, so starting out on Flat Rate pricing as a
first step makes sense.

( work at Google and was a part of the team that introduced BQ Flat Rate)

[0]
[https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/pricing#flat_rate_pricing](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/pricing#flat_rate_pricing)

[1] [https://hackernoon.com/why-googles-answer-to-aws-reseved-
ins...](https://hackernoon.com/why-googles-answer-to-aws-reseved-instances-is-
a-big-deal-4b9b36d8e631)

[2] [https://cloud.google.com/blog/big-
data/2016/02/visualizing-t...](https://cloud.google.com/blog/big-
data/2016/02/visualizing-the-mechanics-of-on-demand-pricing-in-big-data-
technologies)

------
brunoTbear
I quite like the way Google has drawn the map here-since no cables reach from
India to Europe, they've split the map there making the paths easier to trace
between Asia and NA.
[https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QvF57n-55Cs/WZypui8H8zI/AAAAAAAAE...](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QvF57n-55Cs/WZypui8H8zI/AAAAAAAAERw/4jLWFERtNw4KaiQsxxQIO0zCX-
eXAD3ZQCLcBGAs/s1600/network-tiers-3.png)

Compare with the difficulties of
[https://cloud.google.com/images/locations/edgepoint.png](https://cloud.google.com/images/locations/edgepoint.png)

Elegant and subtle work. Just like the networking.

~~~
TheSockStealer
Nice find.

What is the ping time from India to Iran? That is a long trip for a packet.

~~~
orf
I was going to ask the same thing, what's up with that. Why is there no
continuous connextion?

~~~
packetslave
Back when I was in Google Netops we had a healthy (unofficial) fear of having
the backbone connect all the way around the world in a circle, especially with
high-enough bandwidth links that both directions would start to look
attractive to traffic management.

~~~
tantalor
Explain?

------
jstapels
Egress pricing for Google and AWS (sans Lightsail) continues to be one of the
biggest price differences between them and smaller hosts such as Linode and
DigitalOcean.

I think Google missed an opportunity here. They should have cut the prices
more significantly for standard tier (sacrificing performance) to make this
more competitive.

Right now Linode's and DO's smallest $5 plan offers 1TB of transfer, which
would cost $85.00 on Google's new standard plan.

~~~
fabian2k
The extremely high egress prices for any cloud don't seem to have hurt their
popularity much so far. So I suspect they all don't want to give up their cash
cow.

Compared to a VPS or renting a dedicated servers, the egress costs can be
enormous if you come even close to using the traffic contingent you get with
many VPS or dedicated hosts.

Just as a comparison, a dedicated server with Hetzner for ~50-70 EUR per month
includes 30 TB of traffic, which would be at least 2,400 EUR on the Google
Cloud.

~~~
notyourday
Just put the edges somewhere else, use GCP for compute and push the actual
delivery to the edge.

------
idorosen
TL;DR: New Standard tier level is hot potato routing while existing (now
called Premium) tier is cold potato routing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-potato_and_cold-
potato_rou...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-potato_and_cold-
potato_routing)

~~~
panarky
Other cloud providers like AWS and Azure use hot-potato routing which has
lower performance and reliability than GCP's current network offering.

So Google is offering a new "standard tier" equivalent to AWS and Azure, and
undercutting both of them on network egress costs by a small amount.

Network egress costs are still astronomical.

------
breck
Seeing the map of Google's network makes me appreciate more the impact of
undersea cables.

If you're interested in the history of earth-scale networks I recommend this
free documentary on Cyrus Field and the heroic struggle to lay the first
transatlantic cable:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFKONUBBHQw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFKONUBBHQw)

~~~
komali2
Absolutely boggles my gorram mind the large-scale engineering that goes into
making the internet work.

Love the parts in Cryptonomicon where they delve into the sea cables stuff.

~~~
kwindla
Related, one of my favorite Wired Magazine stories -- and favorite pieces of
long form journalism, period -- Neal Stephenson goes out on a boat to string
some cable:
[https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/](https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/)

~~~
komali2
Oh fuck a wired article by Neal Stephenson? Dude thank you for this!

------
jerkstate
How is this different from paying more for a fast lane, which net neutrality
is supposed to prevent?

Edit: there seems to be a bit of confusion what I'm referring to. I'm
referring to the Open Internet Order of 2015 [1] which states:

18\. No Paid Prioritization. Paid prioritization occurs when a broadband
provider accepts payment (monetary or otherwise) to manage its network in a
way that benefits particular content, applications, services, or devices. To
protect against “fast lanes,” this Order adopts a rule that establishes that:
A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access service,
insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not engage in paid prioritization.

[1]
[https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/201...](https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015/db0312/FCC-15-24A1.pdf)

~~~
arkadiyt
It's not differentiating by content, you're paying for a different service
tier. It's like saying getting faster internet by paying for Comcast Business
violates net neutrality.

~~~
jerkstate
One of the primary consumer arguments in favor of net neutrality was that ISPs
advertised bandwidth at certain speeds, and therefore were obligated to
provide that speed to any point on the Internet.

Using that same argument, Google should be obligated to provide maximum
interface speed from any of their compute instances to any point on the
internet, and should not be allowed to sell a tier that gets closer to that
ideal.

~~~
abiox
> One of the primary consumer arguments in favor of net neutrality was that
> ISPs advertised bandwidth at certain speeds, and therefore were obligated to
> provide that speed to any point on the Internet.

really? even a good ten years ago when i was looking for apartments with good
DSL speeds, it was always well explained that bandwidth listing was an ideal
number that didn't apply to things outside the ISP's direct control.

------
jloveless
Google's network (especially w/ BBR[1]) is amazing and this makes the price
point more approachable for other use cases (like running your own CDN[2]).

[1] [https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/07/TCP-BBR-
congest...](https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/07/TCP-BBR-congestion-
control-comes-to-GCP-your-Internet-just-got-faster.html) [2]
[https://blog.edgemesh.com/deploy-a-global-private-cdn-on-
you...](https://blog.edgemesh.com/deploy-a-global-private-cdn-on-your-lunch-
break-7550e9a9ad7e)

------
xg15
Not that I'm really surprised, but does that map imply that Google has its own
trans-atlantic undersea cables? Is there some more info about that?

~~~
CCJK2X
Numerous cables under the Atlantic, their network map is quite something.

[https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/#network-
tab](https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/#network-tab)

~~~
gwern
Are they exclusive owner/builders of any of those? I know I've seen a number
of cables which Google was a part investor/owner in, but sole ownership would
be amazing.

~~~
user5994461
A "cable" is actually comprised of many dedicated fibers, that could each one
transfer some Tb/s and be leased for millions.

I doubt that anyone would keep ALL of them for themselves.

~~~
gwern
On the other hand, if anyone could use up an entire cable, it would be Google,
and there are no particular financial reasons to try to diversity - they are
big enough to self-insure any cable losses.

------
kyledrake
Great idea, but it's still way too expensive. I pay between $0.01/GB (the
fancy CDN stuff) to ($0.0024/GB) from an IP transit provider for Neocities.
That's market rate. I would have given them a pass at $0.02-$0.03, but not for
$0.085.

If you pay this "public internet" rate, you're paying essentially 2007 transit
prices. I hope you don't need to ship a lot of traffic. I hope you don't need
to compete with someone that's paying market rate.

I would love to use GCS for our infrastructure, but with rates like this, it's
hard to imagine us ever switching.

------
heroic
> There are at least three independent paths (N+2 redundancy) between any two
> locations on the Google network, helping ensure that traffic continues to
> flow between these two locations even in the event of a disruption. As a
> result, with Premium Tier, your traffic is unaffected by a single fiber cut.
> In many situations, traffic can flow to and from your application without
> interruption even with two simultaneous fiber cuts.

What does this mean? N+2 redundancy should mean, that even if both go down,
then service will not be affected at all, no?

~~~
ucaetano
Two fiber cuts in a N+2 network could overload the last remaining path,
resulting in some impact on service.

~~~
hamax
I think this would (or should) be called N+1.

Edit: but you're right, this might be what they mean.

------
jedberg
The most interesting thing to me here is that they can actually deliver a
cheaper service by going over the public internet. I would think their private
net would be cheaper because they don't have to pay for transit.

I guess transit is still cheaper than maintaining ones own lines...

~~~
skybrian
Seems like a shaky inference? Hypothetically, two tiers could have the same
cost to provide, but have different profit margins. Market segmentation tends
to be more about value to the customers and what they're willing to pay.

~~~
jedberg
This is a very valid observation and I hadn't thought of that. You're very
right.

------
cwt137
I thought I read an article about an online game company who was doing
something similar with their users; trying to get their users on their private
network as soon as possible. Does anyone else remember that article on HN?

~~~
soccerdave
Yes, it was Riot Games

[https://engineering.riotgames.com/news/fixing-internet-
real-...](https://engineering.riotgames.com/news/fixing-internet-real-time-
applications-part-ii)

~~~
cwt137
Thanks

------
ssijak
Reading this I just got stumped by how many stacks, layers, hardware,
technologies, and knowledge incorporated into all of that those bytes needed
to travel so I could read them on a laptop across the globe

------
0x27081990
I thought they were firm supporters of Net Neutrality. Or is this somehow
different case?

~~~
captainmuon
This is in fact the "original" case of net neutrality. Recently, the
discussion was mostly about your ISP charging - either you or some site - to
prioritize certain content, like streaming.

But in this context, it is about the providers of the "backbone" of the
internet providing the same service to everybody. Usually, different companies
and organisations had their public nets, and they allowed each others data to
flow through their nets. They made so called "peering" agreements which are a
bit intransparent, ISPs have to pay certain amounts depending on the traffic
they cause. Then there are private connections that institutions use for
themselves.

This is Google renting out their "private" net. What is different is that
before, not many organisations had so massive private nets, and while you
could buy traffic on them, this was something typically large organisations
and companies negotiated (I know certain research institutes pay to have their
data routed over a "direct cable" instead of over the regular network). Now,
everybody can do so, and choose to pay for the faster route.

What they could have done instead would have been to sign peering agreements
and add their connections to the "public" net.

Now, is this illegal or immoral? Well, they certainly have the right to rent
out their private net. People have been doing that before. But I think net
neutrality is not a binary question, but a continuum. If being able to afford
a faster route means your site is faster, that violates net neutrality IMO.

~~~
dsr_
Suppose you are an ISP with a new streaming video service as a customer --
ComFlix. You sell a 1Gb/s pipe to ComFlix. You buy a 10Gb/s pipe from Google.

If Google limits, deprioritizes or drops traffic from ComFlix, that's Google
committing a NN violation.

If you limit ComFlix's 1 Gb/s pipe to 1 Gb/s, that's not a NN problem.

If Google limits your 10Gb/s pipe to 10Gb/s, that's not a NN problem.

If Google offers to replace your 10Gb/s pipe with a 20Gb/s pipe at the same
price on the condition that video streams will be intercepted and limited so
that they cannot support more than 480P, and you accept, both you and Google
are violating NN.

If you ask Google for a 10Gb/s pipe but they refuse to sell it to you solely
because ComFlix is a competitor for YouTube, you have an interesting court
case.

Basically, NN violations occur when someone drops packets that they otherwise
would have carried, based on the content, source or destination of those
packets. But paying more for a bigger or more direct pipe by itself is not an
NN problem.

------
CodeWriter23
It would be nice if they would say if their pricing is per GB or per TB.

[https://cloud.google.com/network-
tiers/pricing](https://cloud.google.com/network-tiers/pricing)

~~~
nealmueller
I worked on this product release, at Google. Can you guide my eye please where
we don't specify TB? I'll get that fixed. I took a look and it says TB.
@nealmueller if that's easier for you.

~~~
dimva
You are right, it does say TB everywhere, and does not mention GB anywhere.
But, if this is correct and all prices are per TB, that would be a ~1000x
price cut compared to your current pricing, which is per GB.

~~~
CodeWriter23
Page has been updated to say "per GB" (in bold, lol)

------
ksec
A Naive Questions. When we say Private Networking, In Google or Amazon terms,
does it actually mean Google buying / laying down Fibre from DC to DC, much
like how OVH does. Or they are renting / buying dedicated links in multiple
exchanges.

------
gigatexal
I just think the funny thing is the new feature is instead of taking the hit
on price for the current level of service their shiny new feature is
“standard” networking! Woot!!

------
Animats
Don't sign up for a Google service unless you get contract terms which say
they can't terminate you at will and have penalties if they do.

~~~
lmickh
Curious if any provider has given you similar contract terms?

~~~
Animats
Here are Codero's terms.[1] There's a procedure for dealing with breaches of
the agreement, with 7 day and 30 day notices to cure. It's not one-sided, like
Google's: "Google may terminate this Agreement for its convenience at any time
without liability to Customer."[2] Do you want to bet your business on that?

[1]
[http://codero.cachefly.net/docs/legal/TOS.pdf](http://codero.cachefly.net/docs/legal/TOS.pdf)
[2] [https://cloud.google.com/terms/](https://cloud.google.com/terms/)

~~~
daxorid
This is great. Thank you.

~~~
Animats
Codero, although they now offer cloud services, started as a raw rackmount PC
service, which is what I use them for. That business is generally run as
equipment leasing - you lease for a term, and can renew. Those businesses
generally have reasonable terms of service, because they're almost entirely
business to business and the other side has lawyers.

------
grandalf
Ironically, this offering is precisely the argument against network neutrality
-- different customers need different QoS guarantees.

~~~
openasocket
Not at all. Offering different bandwidths for different prices has nothing to
do with net neutrality. Net neutrality is the principle of not discriminating
traffic based on destination or content by blocking or throttling.

~~~
grandalf
> not discriminating traffic based on destination or content by blocking or
> throttling

This assumes all traffic is of the same kind, such as web traffic. For other
protocols or use-cases, things like latency have a big impact on the content.

~~~
openasocket
OK. But that doesn't have anything to do with Google offering different
networks at different rates.

~~~
grandalf
Well, customers who demand the higher tier service do so because their content
requires it.

~~~
openasocket
And Comcast Business charges more than regular internet, that's not a NN
violation either. Charging more for more bandwidth is what ISPs do all the
time, that doesn't have anything to do with net neutrality. Net neutrality has
to do with packet discrimination: blocking or throttling traffic based on its
content or destination. Google here does neither.

~~~
grandalf
> Net neutrality has to do with packet discrimination: blocking or throttling
> traffic based on its content or destination

So do you think that QoS to prioritize voip traffic violates network
neutrality?

~~~
openasocket
That has nothing to do with this article or your claim that Google is
violating net neutrality by offering different networks for different prices.

------
benbro
Can I use the new standard tier with all services like cloud storage or only
with compute instances?

~~~
boulos
Right now (in Alpha), you have to put your own Regional Load Balancer in front
of GCS [1]:

> Standard tier for Google Cloud Storage can be configured by adding the
> bucket as the backend of cloud load balancer and then setting the network
> tier on the forwarding rule. For this release, you cannot directly configure
> the tier on the Google Cloud Storage bucket.

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud (but not on this)

[1] [https://cloud.google.com/network-tiers/docs/using-network-
se...](https://cloud.google.com/network-tiers/docs/using-network-service-
tiers)

------
josephv
Cloud neutrality now

------
hartator
It's kind of interesting that after being so against preferred networking via
their net neutrality stance, they basically implemented it.

------
unethical_ban
The title should not have been changed - old version noted the product
referenced, Google Cloud Compute.

------
always_good
This precedent (including CloudFlare's new private routing) doesn't bode well
for the public internet.

Imagine the day when everyone has to use private routing and the public
internet barely even gets maintained anymore.

Of course, public internet also suffers tragedy of the commons and not much is
happening on that front. Like how most people are still behind ISPs that allow
their customers to spoof IP addresses. And nobody has reason to give a shit.
We're getting pinned between worst of both worlds. It's a shame.

~~~
cbr
This post is specifically about allowing people to use public routing when
previously they were private-only.

~~~
captainmuon
Especially, _cheaper_ public routing.

Net neutrality is violated IMO when only those who can afford it get faster
routing [1]. The only form of price discrimination allowed is at the ends -
you pay a certain amount for bandwidth and volume to your ISP or hoster.
Inbetween, if you are an end customer, there is just this amorphous peering-
net internet blob, where you pay market price to have stuff routed. You
shouldn't care what route it takes, and the net shouldn't care what data you
are sending. There are no pricing tiers.

Sure, Google is allowed to route stuff on their private net, or on the peered
net. They can let other people use their private network, it happens all the
time. They are not violating the letter of anything. But it is a slippery
slope, and it can lead to a two-class internet, where some people can afford
the "good" internet and some people can't.

[1] Edit: and I realize, in parts that is already the way it is. If you are
doing high-frequency-trading, or sending huge amounts of research/big-data
data, then you can pay somebody _beyond_ paying your ISP for volume and
throughput, and they will give you a custom connection. Net neutrality is not
a black-white question.

------
sitepodmatt
I suppose this was inevitable, the costs of cold potato routing must be
prohibitive, especially if we consider more exotic places, for example riding
the GCP network from just a few milliseconds away in Bangkok all the way to a
tiny GCP compute instance in London on practically all GCP network (exc first
three hops locally). GCP network is awesome, I am surprised we are only see a
small pricing reduction for standard offering, perhaps idea is to eventually
make it 2-3x price, a premium worth it imo if you consider one would push most
bandwidth heavy assets onto edge CDNs anyway.

~~~
yegle
I guess you are saying "the costs of cold potato routing must be prohibitive".

~~~
sitepodmatt
Yes, correct. updated, thanks

------
0xbear
So now we know why Google's egress was so expensive before. It was the premium
offering, and standard wasn't quite ready yet.

~~~
candiodari
Are we looking at the same prices ?

It used to be 10x dedicated server traffic pricing ... and it still pretty
much is. Let's say it's now 8x.

This won't make a difference in any practical comparison.

~~~
0xbear
They don't have to run faster than the bear. They just have to beat Amazon.

------
fundabulousrIII
You know what? If you aren't ready to invest in infra you are out for the buck
and worth a damn. I won't even mention cloud in a meeting anymore. It is plain
fraud.

------
christa30
Via the wonderful people at Google... Introducing Network Service Tiers: Your
cloud network, your way

------
Tepix
> "Over the last 18 years, we built the world’s largest network, which by some
> accounts delivers 25-30% of all internet traffic”

I think that's way more than enough already, thank you.

------
arekkas
Ok so lobby against net neutrality but don't give a * in your own network.
"Don't be evil", right?

~~~
abiox
is there some notional relationship between these two things?

------
lowbloodsugar
So is this like the app engine price hike debacle a few years ago but with
"better" messaging? So "Try Network Service Tiers Today" means "Migrate to
Standard Tier today to avoid the massive price increases coming soon"?

But fundamentally they just massively underestimated costs and need to find a
way to adjust pricing. With app engine it was very conveniently beta, so they
used the end of beta for the price hike. For this, they're having to invent a
"Premium" and a "Standard" Tier, and hey guess what, everyone has been using
"Premium".

My experience so far with Google has been "Use this now, and we'll have a
massive price hike later, if we keep it around at all."

~~~
pfg
They announced the new prices[1]. There doesn't seem to be a price increase
for most scenarios, and the price is slightly lower for some. There appears to
be a $ 0.01 increase if you currently push more than 1 TB, but less than 10 TB
of traffic across continents or within regions like Asia or Oceania.

[1]: [https://cloud.google.com/network-
tiers/pricing#premium_tier_...](https://cloud.google.com/network-
tiers/pricing#premium_tier_pricing)

~~~
lowbloodsugar
So you're saying that the fact that they have new prices now refutes my
suggestion that there will be price hikes in the future? I'm saying Google has
a habit of pricing something, and then hiking the price later. I said
specifically, above, that this announcement is early warning of price hikes:
"migrate to standard tier now before the price hikes". Your rebuttal is "but
the prices right now haven't gone up"?

~~~
pfg
One price increase for a beta product hardly makes for a habit of increasing
prices. If anything, prices in cloud computing have continuously been getting
lower across the entire industry, and with margins being fairly large and the
market getting more and more competitive, I imagine that trend will continue.

If they'd wanted to increase prices for the premium tier, this would've been
the time to do so. Instead, the kept the prices roughly the same, with small
savings for some scenarios and a tiny increase for edge-cases, while
introducing a cheaper tier that has feature parity with the competition and is
quite a bit cheaper. Whatever your past issues with Google, I think you're way
off on this.

