back to article Google cloud: rubbish at updates, world-class at rapid rollbacks

Google's revealed that it has once again borked its own cloud with an update. The latest incident hit last Thursday, when the company made what it's calling “A routine software upgrade to the authorization process in BigQuery”. That update “had a side effect of reducing the cache hit rate of dataset permission validation … …

  1. frank ly

    "a world-class rapid response and rollback capability"

    Maybe they make 'mistakes' deliberately so they achieve and maintain this. Just a sneaky suspicion.

  2. PleebSmash
    FAIL

    week++

    google_cloud_screwup++

  3. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Just imagine being daft enough to run your business on someone else's cloud.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Just imagine being daft enough to run your business on any cloud (even your own).

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        That assumes you have the resources and knowledge required for maintaining your own racks.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            @1980s_coder

            So you're solution to not outsourcing service is to outsource service.. nice!

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: @1980s_coder

              And to a bunch of part timers at that...

        2. Daggerchild Silver badge

          I am fully resigned to a future in which only Cloud providers hire rack builders, OS admins and infrastructure designers.

          Next up - your desktop: an Android/iOS app.

          The rainforest canopy closes over and it's very dark down where the roots are. Another layer completes.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I can fix 'em. Hell, spec, design, build, code all the software from the BIOS on up. Been there done that, burned all the stupid t-shirts they gave me. The question remains, how much down-time, over an entire year, does your firm experience. All of it, not just the top-line total failures. Total all the personnel costs (including all the benefits, training costs,...), operational expenditures for running those racks, the capital expenditures (don't forget the finance charges), yada, yada. Now compare your results versus their (whoever they are) results.

        Many eons ago I got to start-up an IT operation totally greenfield, except for the fact there were a bunch of mainframes, minis, and hundreds of desktops, thousands of peripherals, and I never even got a handle on the number of laptops wandering in and out the gate. I'm well aware of each little line item that will be totaled into the operation of a real IT operation. Heck, my technicians came to me cold. They knew electronics. IT? Nope. Toss creating a few training courses. Techs, operators, users, admin, ... all done from scratch. It was the most fun I'd ever had.

        There's a ton of firms that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend they outsource IT entirely, except for someone to keep tabs, as their full-time job, on all the contractual terms and keeping up on the tech so that someone local can keep the business side and contractor side on the same page. Translator, really.

        I often do something similar with people that need something techie, can't deal with Tech, but have enough money, so I send them off to Apple. Happily. I've never owned an Apple product in my life. Indeed, I've proven time and again, my merely touching them causes spectacular crashes. [Endless entertainment to others.] What I do know is how to qualify the client, match their resources against needs and wants, and get it for them. Makes them happy. Saves me buying Mallox by the case (and lost reputation). That's just an example.

        BTW, that IT operation saved $1.5 million just in the first three months. A year and a half later, I was terminated for medical reasons. Fortunately, I had already trained my replacements (I had advanced warning and bosses protection, but not enough) so it kept on working afterwards. Gold plated reference. Still fun.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          " totally greenfield, except for the fact there were a bunch of mainframes, minis, and hundreds of desktops, thousands of peripherals, and I never even got a handle on the number of laptops wandering in and out the gate."

          Your idea of "totally" or "greenfield" seems somewhat different to mine.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Your idea of "totally" or "greenfield" seems somewhat different to mine.

            You may want to look up the word "sarcasm" :)

  4. RyokuMas
    Trollface

    Kharma...

    So I guess about 20 years from now, the astroturfers from "the next big company" will be continually reposting links to this article whenever Google's cloud is mentioned?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Kharma...

      "So I guess about 20 years from now, the astroturfers from "the next big company" will be continually reposting links to this article whenever Google's cloud is mentioned?"

      Not unless someone actually uses it by then. Google's cloud is currently a desert with rolling tumbleweed compared to #1 (Azure) and #2 (AWS) in the cloud space...

      1. ratfox

        Re: Kharma...

        Google's cloud is currently a desert with rolling tumbleweed compared to #1 (Azure) and #2 (AWS) in the cloud space...

        Bull. AWS is way in front of Azure.

        1. asdf

          Re: Kharma...

          Repeat a lie enough times and hope some clueless person with purchasing decisions calls your sales people is the strategy I guess.

          Here are the numbers:

          Cloud Provider, 2014 Market Share

          AWS, 28 percent

          Microsoft, 10 percent

          IBM, 7 percent

          Google, 5 percent

          Salesforce, 4 percent

          Rackspace, 3 percent

          https://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2015/02/03/aws-leads-market.aspx

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Kharma...

            "Cloud Provider, 2014 Market Share"

            So a year out of date then....

            1. ratfox

              Re: Kharma...

              Microsoft are over a 1$ billion a quarter ahead of AWS in cloud revenue

              Yes, I'm sure their accountants would like us to believe that too. Not that revenue and market share are the same thing anyway.

              So a year out of date then....

              2015 is not over, so you can't have numbers for 2015. Anyway, do you seriously want us to believe that Microsoft could catch up on a lead of 28% to 10% in five months?

              Shill.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Kharma...

                "Yes, I'm sure their accountants would like us to believe that too"

                US accountancy laws are very strict. They are not allowed to mislead or lie unless than fancy prison time.

                "2015 is not over, so you can't have numbers for 2015."

                You can have numbers for a point in time in 2025. Or for last quarter as per Microsoft and Amazon's recent quarterly results...

                "Anyway, do you seriously want us to believe that Microsoft could catch up on a lead of 28% to 10% in five months?"

                Firstly those percentage numbers are estimates based on no hard data - which data we now have as above. Secondly, that very report from which those numbers come estimates Azure's annual growth rate at 136%......

            2. asdf

              Re: Kharma...

              >So a year out of date then....

              For an article published three months ago?

              >Firstly those percentage numbers are estimates based on no hard data

              No data like your wild claims? Really give us an impartial link AC Microsoft sale drone.

              >US accountancy laws are very strict. They are not allowed to mislead or lie unless than fancy prison time.

              Really the laws require precisely breaking how exactly how much each division makes and how that is calculated? How then do companies (including Microsoft) fold divisions inside the company so they don't have to show how much they are losing (see Intel and mobile chips recently). The bottom line yes, but how you get there can be fudged quite a bit by creatively classifying where certain revenue comes from (see inflated Win8 license sales that were in reality downgraded to Win7).

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Kharma...

          "Bull. AWS is way in front of Azure."

          See Microsoft and Amazon's recent results. Microsoft are over a 1$ billion a quarter ahead of AWS in cloud revenue and the gap is growing.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    As good a place as any ...

    Give me an upvote, if you have experienced one or more of the following:

    1) A cloud service "upgrade" which removes/breaks/significantly changes a key functionality

    2) without warning

    3) a (senior) colleague whose answer to being warned that (1) and (2) are real possibilities (and therefore business risks) is "Oh, that won't happen"

    4) Senior manager from (3) being nowhere to be found when it all goes TITSUP.

    Take this post as the first hand in the air.

    As an aside this scenario is going to become everyday - especially since a lot of cloudy goodness being piped into the UK originates in MerkinLand, where they do things differently. For example, (danger of blowing the AC) we use a US cloud based recruitment service. It has proved impossible to get it to say "cv" instead of "resume". It's hard coded into the pages. And presumably the backend database is designed around US recruitment practices - which will be markedly different to UK practices. I'm just waiting for the moment it breaks without warning - having performed some act on the data which makes it unusable ......

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: As good a place as any ...

      Just to be contrarian there are companies out there (including mine) that understand the value of in-housing mission critical IT especially in the manufacturing sector where I work (so happy to actually help make something besides financial derivatives in the first world). I love my company and its conservative but sound strategy but even though all its done is have 20+ years of profits every quarter and grown more the economy (by quite a bit) during that time, today its still probably worth a 1/10 of some year old startup that has one app that allows you to take pictures of your cat's butt in any lighting condition with fancy filters and instantly post it on 10 other useless sites. Those are the companies that do the things you list.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    where is the gleeful headline and vindictive reporting?

    Oh yeah, it's a google outage you're writing about, not azure. My mistake.

    1. sabroni Silver badge

      Re: where is the gleeful headline and vindictive reporting?

      You think "rubbish at updates, world-class at rapid rollbacks" is an advert?

  7. Howard Hanek
    Coat

    Query

    Why aren't we hearing outrage from Greenpeace about the rubbish in the clouds. When can we expect to see their dirigible seizing control of the blighted areas? Or something. Or has Google already paid them off?

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