Nobody sent these signals. It was a minor discussion a long time ago. The billions in investment and growth of the platform are the exact opposite signal.
You seem to be reading this as if the CEO just announced that they're not sure about GCP anymore.
The article does not make it out to be a minor discussion and it was only 18 months ago, hardly 'a long time'. To me it is quite shocking that as short as 18 months ago Google would still consider pulling out of the market but then again, that is exactly the same play they did with other products so it probably should not surprise me.
> The billions in investment and growth of the platform are the exact opposite signal.
At Google's level I would not expect less than billions in investment, the growth of the platform is for now still substantially lagging behind the competition as far as I know, the bulk of the companies I look at are solidly in the AWS camp or in some cases running on Azure, Google is still the exception but getting more common over time. I look at about 50 companies / year so that's a relatively small sample but they are typically well funded start-ups or later stage established companies.
> You seem to be reading this as if the CEO just announced that they're not sure about GCP anymore.
The fact that it was mentioned in a meeting doesn't mean it was on the table. I'd more concerned with management if they weren't talking about exit points for a risky venture. A perfectly necessary point of consideration and I don't doubt that the same topic came up at Amazon and Microsoft.
For Google, if this is still a 'risky venture' then they are simply in the wrong business, they have the scale and should be able to offer their infrastructure at a cost that is quite profitable. There is plenty wrong with Amazon but they have never ever given off signals that they might withdraw their infrastructure offerings from the market. Microsoft also hasn't but then again, they do have a history of launching stuff and withdrawing it again (Xbox the notable exception, that took forever to take off and they stuck with it). Google has taken products off the market not because they weren't profitable but because they weren't profitable enough. That's the nightmare of early infrastructure adopters who will - by that time - be bound hand and feet.
If you're in competition with the likes of Amazon and Microsoft and you intend to go after the same customer profiles then you would do well to ensure that your messaging is what those customers expect and that every outward signal you give is that you're in it for the long haul, with a much longer horizon than the companies that are going to be your customers can oversee so that the trust becomes implicit.
That way if some internal document gets released it doesn't look as though you are still undecided.
Anyway, no need to take my word for this, let's just see how it plays out in the longer term.
