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Google Offers Cheap Cloud Computing For Low-Priority Tasks

Posted by Soulskill on from the guaranteed-7-7s-of-uptime dept.

jfruh writes: Much of the history of computing products and services involves getting people desperate for better performance and faster results to pay a premium to get what they want. But Google has a new beta service that's going in the other direction — offering cheap cloud computing services for customers who don't mind waiting. Jobs like data analytics, genomics, and simulation and modeling can require lots of computational power, but they can run periodically, can be interrupted, and can even keep going if one or more nodes they're using goes offline.

2 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Going back to dumb terminals? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In a way the cloud was big way back when. I remember in the late 70's my high school had a matrix dumb terminal tied to a couple college servers. It seems we are going back to that way of thinking. Use minimal hardware and let the power of the processing be handled elsewhere.

  2. Re:It will be closed in a year anyway. by Moof123 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Google seems to commit to nothing, and everything is rolled out as Beta.

    By time they have the bugs worked out everyone has forgotten it and the buzz is long since gone.

    Other than search and selling ads I am confused as to where they actually turn a profit? Google+ is a dud, Android is given away, Glass cratered hard, self driving cars are years off (and I don't get it), and whatever their Second Life competitor was is gone, etc, etc.

    So is Google just a Search/Ad money machine that can't figure out what to do with its Billions other than make really cool flops?