Has Google Wasted Billions of Dollars?

(unless I'm missing a floating city of servers in the sky)

That may be more true than you suggest.

One site I looked at suggested that some of the cloud is stored on satellites.

Judging by the speed my cloud based Apple's OS is delivered at I'm ready to believe that.

Good point.

Please enlighten me.

When I type Google in my non cloud based Mac's address bar it loads faster than I can follow.

When I type Google in my cloud based Mac's address bar it loads slower than a reluctant donkey.

Please tell me the difference.

<Sigh>

I suspect this is because your cloud based Mac has no local operating system commands. In ye olde main frame computing terms you are holding a dumb terminal and are waiting for the main frame to get back to you most of the time.

Is there a fix for that?

I'm still waiting to find out what exactly IS a "cloud-based Mac"!

The only thing I can think of at the moment would be a PC running some cloud-based Mac emulator... That would indeed be inherently slow.

"<Sigh>"

LOL.

You sound like a pouty high school girl.

Please elucidate "cloud based Mac" vs. "non cloud based Mac". I've been using Macs since year 1 (1984), have been an Apple-certified Mac repair technician (Long since expired), and I've never heard of a "cloud based Mac".

My older non cloud based Mac's OS is on the computer's hard drive, ie, everything is very local and it's lightning fast.

My newer cloud based Mac's OS is somewhere "in the cloud", wherever that may be, and according to what I've read that could be in China or Eastern Europe or Russia, or it could anywhere else in the world, but the bottom line difference that I see, is it's pathetically slow compared to my older Mac.

The difference is easily visible in the time spent loading pages online and the best comparison is using Google's home page where the difference between the older Mac and the newer Mac is huge.

The older Mac, whose OS is on its hard drive, loads Google's home page so fast it's not even the blink of an eye.

The newer Mac, whose OS is somewhere in the cloud, has taken up to a 30 seconds to load the Google page, but even at it's fastest it has never ever matched my older Mac for loading speed.

I assume it's the cloud that is causing that difference and I'm guessing it's because the cloud server where my OS is located is a long long way from where I'm located, hence the slow response times.

That doesn't just go for Google's home page, I just use that as an easy example, it goes for everything.

I've had to get used to waiting for it to respond and now I just cope with it because Apple have made it so difficult to go back to an older OS that it's not worth the bother, but it's such a vast degradation in quality it's difficult to comprehend it's the same company that made the two vastly different systems.

As I said in my reply to RedFred, I still don't know what constitutes a "cloud-based Mac".

My best bet, without seeing what software you are using, is that you either have been infected with Malware or have some serious processing going on in the background. One possibility is that your machine is being used as a 'bot' by someone somewhere, so you only get to use it in between their operations cycles.

Go to Applications/Utilities and run the Activity Monitor. Look for anything using large fractions of CPU. I just did that, and:

Just yesterday, I downloaded and installed a 30-day free trial of "Autodesk Fusion 360" (a CAD program) to try, and I see it is really hogging myCPU, in spite of the fact that I was not using it at the time.

If you see something suspicious, double-click on the Process Name, and you will get some more details, along with a button to force that process to quit.

I help many others solve Mac problems, and would be glad to help you as well, although I might not be able to until I return Sunday from a trip to New York.

"Clearly you don't understand how this works."

Er, yeah, that's why I'm asking the question.

Go ahead, enlighten me.

Unless you are doing a remote boot I don't think Apple OS would be off your local hard drive. Remote boot might make it seem cloud based as it would be slower depending on how that is setup. I find this highly unlikely to be the case.

Right! So highly unlikely that I hadn't even considered the possibility! I've never even tried it.

One thing to check would be to see if your user profile is being stored in the cloud. This has caused me a lot of grief on Windows OS, and this is on a private cloud. This could be getting done for "back up" if you chose to do this initially when you started the new system.

If that would be the case, changing the settings for it to be local be help your speed a lot. This would be most likely what is the issues as it would take forever to boot an OS from cloud.

File access on the cloud will be sluggish either way.

Local servers are better because they are not a hazard to air travel...

Google Cloud

Data Transfer

Online and offline transfer solutions for moving data quickly and securely.

Doesn't live up to the promise from where I'm sitting.

We'll all be in the cloud soon enough....

http://data-centers.in/types-of-cloud-computing/

Yes, but is it better, faster, better?

No, is my experience.

It's slower, worse, and now I'm finding out that cloud servers could be anywhere in the world, including in controlling, snooping regimes such as China.

Where On Earth Is Cloud Data Actually Stored?

Is it faster, better, faster? No, it's cheaper, cheaper, cheaper.....haha

And consequently less secure.

Any notion that your data was ever secure is completely erroneous if you have ever connected your PC to the internet, or used most social media, or were forced to subscribe to Windoze 10.

Nothing you have on your Mac or PC is secure today.

Just the other day my wife was working from home, plugged into the city server and running reports when, without warning, Windows hijacked her PC for an "update".

The only way to have secure data is to use an external hard drive and use it only when not connected to the internet.

Yes, I'm quickly losing that notion, especially when hearing cloud servers could be in China of all places.

The lag I get in loading Google from my cloud based Mac probably corresponds exactly to the lag in time for a packet to come from China.

Thanks Apple, you fuxx.

Tell me, as a Windows 10 user, which I believe is also cloud based, do you get a lag in load time of Google's home page compared to when Windows was not cloud based?

I'm curious because that is the biggest indicator to me of the degradation of service by moving the Mac OS to the cloud.

I have w8.1 which is not intrusive. I can choose what and when I download updates and the data mining is not automatic.

The wife has w10 and she said she doesn't use Google.

Won't your W8.1 go extinct some day and they'll slowly shut it down?

That's what's happening to my older Mac.

If it wasn't I'd still be using it.

They just stop giving me updates and it's slowly becoming a relic of the past.

For Work on our so called 'legacy' computer (Internal naming) we're running V7, all because any up grades our Cadd software interferes (has conflicts) with other programs used in the company... Skype comes to mind...

Then we are also giving another laptop, where we run W10 on to function with the rest of the company...

I'm the guy in the middle trying to stay productive...

Lol.

That video perfectly illustrates your dilemma.

Yes, W8.1 will go extinct soon enough. Then I'll be left choosing a W10 machine or going over to Linux.

If I am forced to go with W10, I'll take whatever steps I can to control the reporting of all my personal data back to MS. The uncontrolled updates make me very skeptical that I will have any real control over data mining.

Then, there's always the NSA, CIA, FBI and other government big brother snoops.

We've all been forced into the same restricted funnel and there's nothing good left after that brief period of time when the internet seemed like the greatest invention in the history of the world, ever.

It's still better than trudging to the library to rifle through pages of outdated material but it's also a tool for snooping that is used by governments around the world.

A trade off we have to live with in order to enjoy the benefits I guess.

lyn: I have a 10 year old laptop that got completely barfed-up by the newest W10 update. I just went ahead and installed Linux Mint on it (for free). Works like a charm. Mint is close to XP/W7 as far as the look and feel. I had already installed it on a 12 year old laptop only used in the garage, and it took no time to get used to it.

Thanks I have a laptop with Vista so I may try that..

From my phart smone by the pool it's 110 here.

Pfft! It's 111 here. Where do you live, the frozen white North!

Yeah, about 6 months ago I took a 12 year old laptop (my daughter's first one for college) that started out Vista, then got W7 when available, and put Mint on it just to try it out. Now it's my garage computer.

I'll try it.

I have nothing to lose.

Same here, when I upgraded to a better spec. PC, I thought I might as well try Linux on the old machine. It's now the fastest computer in the house.

I completely ditched windows, at home, years ago. Linux Mint is my OS of choice. I have it on all of my PCs and Laptops. I find it is very capable and user friendly.

And that's exactly the problem.

Slower and less secure is now the norm that has been forced on us.

That might be how the term "cloud" was born. One hell of a fart.

Has Google wasted bilions of dollars building local server farms all over the world, now that a lot of stuff is being moved to the cloud?

Where do you think the cloud resides?

Answer: Server farms.

Anyways... if you look at the big scheme of things...Google spending billions of dollars on server farms, on all the cash they generate, is nothing more then the cost of doing business.

I think the difference is that local servers deliver fast and furiously whereas cloud servers can be anywhere in the world, for example in China, and therefore will be slower and can also be snooped upon by governments with nefarious ends in mind, according to this article.

Where On Earth Is Cloud Data Actually Stored?

This is the primary reason Google has built so many server farm locations... to make the cloud more local in more areas to help with speed of access.

If your buying space on their cloud you can determine what areas your data is mirrored to for faster access from your facilities by making the data closer which in theory should make your access to the date faster. but it all comes at a price... more mirrors, more cost for the cloud.

As with all new things, there will be bugs in it. The internet is still an infant. Originally it was for coms between two or more stand-alone units. But, as mobile devices became more available to the public at-large, more resources had to be stored in the cloud. Now the emphasis is fading away from those stand-alone systems. That's bad for reliability. The more connections required to function, the more things can go wrong, and break the chain of resources/compatibility/processing. The more resources locally available, the less likely interference/failure will disable the system. Also, not knowing where/who is in possession/responsibility of the data/processing, the less accountability there is. But, don't let the desire for "instant gratification" prevent the fulfillment of the potential of this technology. Debugging will take time, especially in this "cloudy haze". I just hope people don't "overdrive their headlights" or go 1000 GB/s in a 1000 MB/s speed zone. A little decimal point is easily missed, but causes big mistakes/problems. Computers are very intolerant that way. People/humans need to be careful and pay attention to details. I hope the baby is not thrown out with bath water, and lose the potential along with the bugs. Once we learn the right way to do it, we can start crawling/walking/speed-walking/sprinting/running/driving/flying/warp-driving. I hope what my sister said doesn't come true. "The faster you go, the behinder you get.". The key would be to go at the speed compatible with the capability/competency of its users/debuggers. You don't want to continue to build on a faulty system. That's why houses-of-cards fail.

Friends,

As we embed smart devices into our everyday lives, we are automatically increasing the traffic and data that is offloaded. Unfortunately our operating systems, web browsers, software programs, and web pages all have grown larger and more complex, with pictures, graphics, video, and many other features that are attractive but frequently don't have any embedded necessity. All this increases the bandwidth the data requires.

So, we have exponential growth in the amount of data per device and the number of devices per individual. The cloud has to grow to handle this volume, but this growth requires money, which requires advertising, which apparently requires more data--so we are in a never-ending circle. Perhaps it is a death spiral?

Non-local data storage is the cloud. It is convenient and has very low start-up cost in terms of hardware. A local server will require local support. Some local server software versions are very robust but others may need daily maintenance. That costs the owner money--operating expense. Storage on and access to the cloud requires bandwidth in the internet backbone as well as in the local connections--all at a very real cost. In many cases, the lack of bandwidth leads to download times of hours and frequent failures of this to finish.

Complex and/or multi-purpose software (the norm today with operating systems and programs) has millions of lines of code and hundreds or even thousands of links, so it is going to have errors, bugs, and places where it can be hijacked and exploited. Therefore upgrades/patches become essential. But the frequency of upgrades and actual size of the software makes updates a challenge when the software resides on a local machine. Storing the software on a cloud server with users accessing it as needed becomes attractive to the makers of the software; they can also increase their profits by leasing access to it on a monthly basis instead of licensing it with one-time fees.

The memory requirements for the software and its operation increase, along with the requirements for the hardware to handle the software. Thus, computers require replacements or major upgrades to ensure compatibility with the software.

Options?

• Open-source operating systems such as Linux and software to work on them.
• Filters to restrict or block the loading of unneeded video content (with options to override).
• Avoiding the Internet of Things.
• Avoiding smart devices unless they are truly necessary.
• Breaking our addiction to instant communication, including video chats and similar things.
• Developing and marketing simple to use home servers that are robust with an MTBF (mean time between failure) of at least 5-10 years, and also with ease of being setup.

I use computers daily and do not trust them at all. Google is not to blame. WE ARE.

--JMM

You make some good points. But, I think this would be a temporary (relatively) way to cope with the problems, until someone finds a good permanent solution. Eventually (who knows when), I think it will improve. I just hope it's sooner than later. Maybe Instant Gratification is not practical, but it would nice if possible. Meanwhile, back at the ranch....

All software is a temporary fix.