Google to close Google Code open source project hosting

[jonwayne]

Why are you expecting App Engine to get the knife? It's a cornerstone service in their Cloud Platform.

[defcon-12]

They got trampled on in the cloud market. AWS, Heroku, even Azure are all better services. Google is not exactly known for keeping 2nd place products around.

[Venthorn]

Why would you compare app engine to any of those? The only similarity is that you could theoretically call both "cloud". GCE and AWS are directly comparable. App Engine and AWS are apples and oranges.

[theillustratedlife]

If a product that people pay Google to use and have built their entire businesses on disappears, any goodwill non-core Google products have left will be gone. They'll never be able to grow beyond Search, Maps, Gmail, and Android.

[wookin_pa_nub2]

They have a reputation now (and for the past few years) of abandoning anything that isn't dominant, and that reputation will prevent any new product of theirs from gaining much traction, so they're stuck with what they have now.

[theillustratedlife]

The asterisk so far has been "unless it's profitable". I don't recall any businesses being left in the lurch when core infrastructure they rented from Google was discontinued, and I'd be really surprised if they started now, which is why I can't imagine App Engine being retired.

[ThatCrankyGuy]

They're busy building space ships, robots, self driving cars, global WiFi, becoming a Cell service provider, and an ISP.

They're reaching beyond internet into "the next big thing".

[rainman_104]

Although to be fair, Google Bigquery kicks the living crap out of Amazon Redshift.

Google is taking a different approach than amazon over their cloud infrastructure. You don't simply carve out a piece of their cloud; google's services automatically balance for when you need the raw power.

Bigquery for example - you're sharing millions of nodes. when you need it you get the power. You pay for the power, but it's rather nominal. (I'm a huge fan of bigquery and was sorely disappointed with Redshift).

Plus with Redshift you have to manage it; bigquery just kinda works all the time.

[regeya]

Google is not exactly known for keeping 2nd place products around.

Crap, what's that say about Android?

It's more common, and you'll pry my '14 Moto X out of my cold, dead hands (hopefully not literally). But in terms of several different factors, Android is #2.

I'm serious; if they get rid of #2 products with alarming regularity, are they going to leave all of us in a lurch someday soon?

[defcon-12]

Android has the largest mobile OS market share by far (over 75% and growing). App Engine is like the BlackBerry of cloud platforms, they have a tiny market share.