What did you expect GET requests to be counted as then? As an aside, I think it's fairly well documented: https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing#operations-pricing (lists "GET Object" under class B) [but disclosure: I work for Google]
It did not occur to me that HTTP GET will be considered as an XML API operation. So I didn't expect HTTP GET requests to be charged because everywhere I read (including that page you listed) the pricing is for XML API operation.
That + it being more expensive than cloudfront and s3 came as a rude shock :(
In general I find google cloud documentation and the service much better and more pleasant to work with than AWS but in this case it is not. Both S3 and Cloudfront have much clearer pricing (and positioning). In network pricing,
both S3 & Cloudfront are significantly cheaper
Oh boy. "No one I know uses Google+ much, if at all." I'm getting sooo sick of this argument. Noone I know uses Twitter, but a lot of friends are active on Google+, sharing things in private. Yet I don't call Twitter a failure. It's just different groups of people that use either service, and just because you have more connections to one "side" doesn't mean the other doesn't exist...
These claims that people make about Google+ are ridiculous. Sure, if you count account sign-ups then they are probably #1 but active users...no way.
"Google+’s user numbers are juiced simply because Google forces the product on everyone, and if you use Google to authenticate yourself to third parties, you are using Google+"
I feel the same way, I know a lot of people online that use Google+, but zero of my IRL friends use Google+ (most use FB, Instagram and Twitter).
You're confusing the cause and the effect. Google± is not being juiced up with integrations to make G+ popular, but rather those integrations are the reason for why G+ was created in the first place.
Google simply wanted a universal Google account for YouTube, Google Play, Blogger and so on. As to for why the wanted that? Well, Facebook is proving that there is value in collecting people's likes and comments, and then using those for serving ads.
On the active G+ users remark, I disagree. Every YouTube user is now a G+ user. Every GPlay user that wants to write reviews is now a G+ user.
So the point that their growth is not organic is rather moot.
This statement surprises me. Casual video-viewing is a large proportion of YouTube's attraction and does not require authentication ( except for age-restricted content ).
I don't have any Google accounts and I don't have any problems viewing YouTube content.
Every Youtube uploader might be a G+ user, but what proportion of the audience is that? 10% at most?
I go to YouTube all the time to listen to music. Organizing playlists on YouTube requires an account (playlists which are public by default, something that really annoys me). Liking a video on YouTube requires an account. You really underestimate the number of active YouTube accounts. And even if 10% is a good estimate, given that YouTube is the de facto destination for videos, 10% is huge.
And btw, Facebook is a competitor because a great deal of YouTube traffic comes from Facebook and so many people end up liking or commenting around YouTube links on Facebook. And that's what Google is trying to prevent with Google+: lost traffic, lost opportunities.
Note, I'm not saying that what Google is doing is good for us. After all, the Internet's strength is in its decentralized aspect. All I'm saying is that, from Google's point of view, Google+ already is a success. People miss the point when they view Google+ as a failure. Larry Page once said that Google+ is now the new Google. And he wasn't joking about it.
People laughed at Android when it came out. Nobody's laughing now. I fear a Google dominated near future, which is why in the Google versus Facebook battle I actually hope Facebook wins, but I admire Google's execution.
Did you even read the post? They specifically mentioned sharing things in private. Of the friends I have who use Google+, most exclusively post privately.
I think the key to understanding Arrington's perspective here is to look at this sentence:
"And I certainly don’t see people giving out their Google+ names on the cable news networks and other TV shows."
My guess is that Arrington isn't interested in numbers as much as he is in what technology has more fully permeated the public consciousness. The assumption here is that mass media is still an accurate reflection of whatever's dominating the cultural mainstream... Arrington sees celebrities on TV advertising themselves via twitter handles but never a G+ account, so to him, G+ is essentially a fringe product.
Wow I've been overpaying by going into a store. I use T-Mobile pay as you go whenever I come to the States (twice a year for 2-week stints usually).
Do you know if I buy a SIM card and activate it for that deal will I be able to let it lapse and then re-up it when I come back in 6 months? Or will I have to buy a new SIM card every time?
I was on that plan and let it expire. My account page still displays the plan, while noting that it's unfunded and I can't use it, so it seems that you can let it lapse and re-up. I've been curious whether that will still be true come the new year.
I have been living in London since 2011, so I let me old T-Mobile plan lapse. When I came back my SIM was dead, so I bought a pay-as-you-go SIM in the store. They told me if I don't top it up every 3 months it is not guaranteed to work. However after I am typically gone for six month cycles, and the last 2 times it was still active.
I'm very keen on trying this new plan though as $3/day on top of pay as you go is not a good value on a 2 week trip. I'd be very happy to just pay $30 and get a reasonable amount of mins/texts along with great data.
The value plan math starts to make sense when you go to family plans and/or routinely need more minutes. We currently have 3 lines, two of which come with 2GB data, with 1000 shared minutes and unlimited messages. $80/month plus taxes.
Exactly. The value plans start to look really nice as you add more users, especially with the $0 add a line promotion they had a few months back (and still might have).
Chromebook/-box indeed sounds great for remoting into a dev machine, but damn, what did they do to the keyboard on the new Chromebook? Lots of stuff moved around...
I second this, helped me a lot, too. In particular, it covers a wide range of topics, each with some introductory exposition, and gives a variety of example questions with answers.
Additionally, glassdoor.com has a lot of user-contributed interview questions and lets you search for/filter by specific companies.
