HN Books @HNBooksMonth

I'll give a shout out to Ries and Trout's 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

https://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing-Violate/d...

It's a quick read, well-written, and the points it makes are as true now as ever, especially I think in terms of true "marketing" - that is, identifying the subsegment among the total addressable market for your particular product that you have the best shot of converting into paid customers, and some approaches for doing so.

⬐ murph37

Never heard of this one, but I'll check it out. Thanks for the recommendation!

Classics:

https://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al-Ries/dp/00...

https://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing-Violate/d...

Seth Godin is another author well worth reading:

https://www.amazon.com/Seth-Godin/e/B000AP9EH0

And a few others:

https://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-3rd-Disruptive-Mainstr...

https://www.amazon.com/Kellogg-Branding-Marketing-Faculty-Ma...

https://www.amazon.com/Differentiate-Die-Survival-Killer-Com...

https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Advertising-Man-David-Ogi...

And, of course:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=vaynerchuk

There are no magic pills though. The best thing is to read and learn from a lot of perspectives and then start to navigate the waters you happen to be sailing. No two markets or products are going to be the same. In fact, the same product will require a different based on where it is in the adoption/maturity cycle.

So, as far as I always understood, there is a rule [1] that says there can always be only two leaders in a single space. UPS and FedEx, Coca Cola and Pepsi, Oracle and MSSQL, etc.

From my professional perspective (integration specialist of a database vendor), all enterprises are either going to AWS or Azure. I think this is almost inevitable: the differences between the clouds are simply not big enough to make a difference from an executive's perspective, so to manage risk, you either go with what you know (Azure) or the market leader (AWS).

Where would this possibly leave Google? All I can see is that, since it would be impossible for them to get a decent position in the cloud market, they will have to completely reinvent this space and create their own, new market which makes the cloud as we know it obsolete.

I just don't see this happening under their new cloud leadership (former Oracle, sales-oriented exec). It would have to be driven by massive innovation, not by "doing the same stuff as AWS but then slightly better/cheaper".

What are HN's thought about this?

(Obligatory disclaimer: on a personal level I absolutely love Google Cloud and think it's a much more developer-friendly environment, but professionally I just can't make a strong case for why, say, a financial institution should use Google Cloud rather than AWS or Azure.)

EDIT: Did not expect this topic to be downvoted this far. Is this not an appropriate discussion / violate any rules?

[1] "Law of Duality" https://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing-Violate/d...

⬐ fh973

This "law of duality" is not very convincing. He does not offer criteria where it applies not does he argue why it would apply for the examples given. How does his adoption curve apply to coke?

Especially in the cloud market, I see rather more players in the future as the underlying technologies become commercially available or even commodity.

In the other side customers value support and services, which does not scale well, and smaller players have an advantage.

⬐ yashap

As others have noted, hype from random marketing book != actual laws of anything.

If I was starting a startup today, I’d choose Google Cloud. They’re a bit cheaper than AWS, they have all the big types of cloud services you need, and they tend to be more simple/plug-and-play than AWS, requiring less Ops expertise to manage. GKE is awesome, Big Query is easier to manage than Redshift, PubSub easier to both manage and use than Kinesis, if you ever want a truly global database Google has that while AWS doesn’t, etc. AWS has a larger product catalogue, and is more configurable for big enterprises with huge Ops/security teams, but for a startup that has mostly dev and little Ops expertise, I’d choose Google Cloud.

⬐ sonnyblarney

" as far as I always understood, there is a rule [1] that says there can always be only two leaders in a single space"

The '22-laws-of-marketing' are not 'laws' - they're just called that by profs trying to hustle a book.

It's a great book that everyone, especially Engineers should read, but it's not necessarily factual.

There can be many 'leaders' it depends on the industry.

Google is no slouch, they have a differentiated offer that may appeal to different kinds of orgs, particularly startups.

To your own point: 'developer friendly' ... Google may be a choice for devs building 'cloud first' solutions, and the primary basis for could based companies. Remember that AWS and Azure have a lot of customers just porting over old-school software onto cloud instances. They need virtual instances in quantity and classic, straight forward easy ways to manage them. Not fancy new cloud gear.

Cloud is big, and there's a lot of growth, moreover, as more services go cloud and we move away from legacy installations ... Google might even possibly have an advantage.

⬐ Already__Taken

1. Google will do this anyway, because it's not going to run on AWS or azure, so why not keep some skin in the game?

2. Isn't k8s a play to reinvent this space?

⬐ lbriner

1. Because it is a very different thing to have an internally managed cloud than it is to offer this as a product with the massive support required for enterprise, something that Google has never put much resource into.

Amazon and MS have vast support networks because enterprise wants to feel like they have some control and feedback on their systems.

Also, unless you can innovate in the space (or go really cheap), why would I ever choose a smaller player over a larger one?

This is another example of the problem these rich companies have where cash is not a problem but identity and direction is.

⬐ halbritt

There are technical reasons.

Azure is doing quite well leveraging Microsoft's existing enterprise relationships. I'm not sure how much success folks are having "lifting and shifting" their Microsoft infrastructure into the cloud, some, maybe?

However, everyone that I've heard of that understands cloud native type architectures that has attempted to deploy into Azure is looking to leave.

⬐ colemickens

>However, everyone that I've heard of that understands cloud native type architectures that has attempted to deploy into Azure is looking to leave.

Extremely unsurprising, but I'd be interested to read more.

⬐ halbritt

Kind of ignored this because it's a long list of stuff. I don't really want to repeat stuff that I've "heard". Friend of mine does consulting for a few big orgs, and he tells me that things are bad enough that many of his customers are looking to move in spite of being heavily subsidized by Microsoft. He mentioned numbers like >$1m in credits. Unfortunately, my friend isn't very technical so when I press him on details, I get very little.

However, that correlates pretty closely with my own personal experience. I've worked with a fair bit of the Azure products and it feels to me very much like a work in progress.

The identity management stuff has been a moving target since day one. That is, how to authorize against the service itself. This is apparent in many of the Python libraries where this is documented.

The Python libraries that I've seen look like they were produced by interns. I'm performance with ADL is pretty rough.

My main goal with Azure was to deploy Kubernetes clusters there. The list of problems is very long and has been documented ad nauseum in many Medium articles. In the 14 or so months I've been working with Azure, it hasn't improved as quickly as I'm accustomed to with AWS and GCP.

A year ago, I shifted the majority of my production infrastructure from AWS to GCP. By comparison to Azure, I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the products from GCP. My company uses GSuite which made identity management and RBAC a breeze. The GKE product is way, way better than anything else, and there are a handful of things that I like better than AWS.

I wouldn't encourage anyone to shift from AWS unless they were planning a large Kubernetes implementation. I would encourage folks to try GCP and especially GKE to get a sense of the differences.

There's nothing about Azure that I've discovered yet that would cause me to recommend it to anyone. It's possible that if a company had a heavier investment in MS products that it might be worthwhile, but that's not the case for mine. We only ever use MSSQL occasionally for development purposes and I've found that I can spin up an instance of that quite nicely in k8s with the Microsoft authored helm chart.

⬐ pmart123

I completely agree with this.

But, also in think Google does have some advantages. Out of the box, their NLP algorithms seem much better than AWS’s offering. They also offer custom search as an api. I haven’t used it, but bigquery seems very good. I do agree these are probably not enough to have an enterprise shift. Maybe if they specialize on a couple industries that won’t choose amazon (fedex, ups, target, Walmart, streaming/media). It does seem like google has made strong inroads in finance as well.

⬐ pjmlp

Kubernetes also run on the competing clouds, so it isn't that much of an advantage, unless they add GCE specific features.

⬐ jeremyjh

Well, they do. For example you can configure your node pool to automatically upgrade its members so you don't have to worry about kernel patches. They have a proxy service for their Cloud SQL product so you don't have to fiddle with configuration, its just another k8s service name. Of course Amazon could do these things but they simply haven't. I think their biggest advantage though is they abstract away the master - you just have a node pool and don't have to worry about the masters. With Amazon you will pay $300 a month just to have a HA master, before you launch even one node in your pool.

Also once you start getting into k8s you will find so much more information in the community with specific instructions for GKE; its by far the best environment to learn in for that reason.

Google falls down in so many other areas though that it probably doesn't matter how good GKE is. The biggest annoyance to me is their Postgres offering still has no point in time recovery.

edit to add: One other big advantage I forgot to mention is that launching a GKE cluster takes only a couple of minutes. I have a Terraform configuration that will launch a GKE cluster and run my deployments and my app is up and running after less than 5 minutes. This makes it much more attractive to do things like spin up a new cluster for each pull request.

⬐ coredog64

EKS pricing is $0.20/hour, or ~ $144/month. Not free, but also not $300.

I will agree that EKS startup is slow, but given the way it needs to run, I don’t think many customers will want to run more than a few clusters per VPC.

⬐ jeremyjh

$144 a month gets you one master. As I said, an HA master is twice that. If you want to compare to GKE, you are starting at $288 a month.

⬐ bbgm

The only master for EKS is an HA master (to be precise a 3 AZ master).

⬐ cddotdotslash

Not sure where these numbers are coming from but EKS has 3 masters by default. You don't get HA by running 2 clusters (I assume that's where you got $288). $144 gets you 3 masters in 3 AZs.

⬐ jgalar

k8s feels much more like an effort to commoditize this space through standardization. It's a pretty common business strategy [1].

[1] https://www.gwern.net/Complement

⬐ pmart123

I’m not sure I agree with the rule of two. Industries typically consolidate over time. Also, anti-trust rules typically prevent a rule of one. Several industries have had multiple competitors thrive though. Banking would be a good example of this where Citi, JPM, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America are competing in a landscape where many more competed 15 years ago. Automotives have consolidated, but there’s still more than two. I would also throw IBM into the MSFT and Oracle 90’s enterprise comparison. I think one of the biggest advantages of Google cloud as a business is the fact that most retailers will refuse to use AWS and more retailers are building out their technical abilities.

⬐ Andrex

"Where would this possibly leave Google? All I can see is that, since it would be impossible for them to get a decent position in the cloud market, they will have to completely reinvent this space and create their own, new market which makes the cloud as we know it obsolete."

How naive would it be to say there's such potential in Firebase? It seems so different from what's out there now, and Google's putting a lot of effort and resources into it now too (including sunsetting existing products like Google Analytics Mobile in favor of the Firebase versions.)

⬐ kkarakk

and when is firebase going to be sunset for the newer shinier thing? google has a huge problem with sunsetting services that work for something marginally better

⬐ paganel

I've also mentioned in another comment but in the market where I'm located (Eastern Europe) the Google Cloud sales-people are totally absent while MS has been very, very insistent in pushing Azure down people's throats. I think Google was expecting their cloud solution to be similar to how AdWords + Search worked for them, i.e. that they would need close to no sales-people down in the trenches because the product would almost sell by itself based on its technical merits alone, but apparently (as you well mention) the different cloud implementations are not that, well, different between them so it all comes down to which company was first in the market (AWS) and which company has got the best and most aggressive sales-people (MS).

⬐ gaius

so it all comes down to which company was first in the market (AWS) and which company has got the best and most aggressive sales-people (MS).

That is not it at all. What typically happens is an organisation will run a pilot project and see how it goes. On Azure it’s easy to speak to a real person, and they will be knowledgeable and take you seriously, and be empowered and willing to help you. On Google even if you manage to speak to anyone, they’ll treat you like an idiot. Guess who that organisation is going to go to for bigger and bigger projects?

⬐ halbritt

My thoughts are that I don't know anyone that's adopted Azure at scale that are happy with the service.

N=1, YMMV, etc.

⬐ SomewhatLikely

The rule might feel true as a consequence of Zipf's law that says the second biggest is roughly half as big, and the third biggest is 1/3 as big as #1, etc. So because of a power law, the #1 and #2 are big enough that many people will just dismiss the rest.

⬐ JumpCrisscross

> there is a rule [1] that says there can always be only two leaders in a single space

The problem with this “rule” is it’s a tautology. Any ordered list of N > 1 will have two leaders. (The better question, how are market shares distributed, is difficult to precisely answer given the inherent subjectivity of delineating markets.)

⬐ alasdair_

Google cloud seems to be a better fit for startups while azure is for larger non-tech firms. I can’t imagine a new startup ever choosing azure over gcloud or aws and i can’t imagine some random all-microsoft insurance company choosing gcloud over azure.

⬐ iamgopal

Eventually All internet company will love and move to gcp. i.e. snap or Netflix or Salesforce or slack etc. All enterprise company will move to internet company. Google wins.

⬐ ummonk

The law of duality just seems to be Zipf's law with an arbitrary cutoff at #2...

⬐ ElBarto

There's several aspects here.

I quite agree that if Google does not get into the top 2 it will likely be irrelevant in that market.

The other aspect, as discussed in the article, is that this is a completely new market and way of doing business for Google, which seems to create a clash of cultures. If that is indeed the case it may be extremely difficult for Google to overcome.

"The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" is a must-read, by the way, as is the one on branding.

⬐ gretch

seems really poorly defined and argued

Here are the author's examples:

>McDonalds and Burger King

McDonald's is far larger than BK. Also Wendy's is larger than BK according to this source: https://www.qsrmagazine.com/content/qsr50-2017-top-50-chart

>GM and Ford

Another non-example. We just gonna pretend toyota doesn't exist?

>Nike and Reebok

Again, wtf? Even when reebok stood alone, there was still Adidas in the picture. Not a duality

⬐ arethuza

Or indeed VW Group - which, as least as of last year, was the biggest car company:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38793253

⬐ ElBarto

You should try to understand the point and the context of these examples. I would suggest you read Al Ries books.

These examples were picked in the early 1990s, and are specific to the US market. Things change.

For example the US car market has long been largely dominated by GM and Ford with Toyota only recently breaking that (and VW is non-existent). GM and Ford are still the two largest manufacturers: https://knoema.com/infographics/floslle/top-vehicle-manufact...

The point is that there is usually very few dominating brands in a market, with the top 2 (approximately) yielding the power and the others following and filling the gaps.

⬐ slededit

It’s incumbent on you to make your point with contemporary examples or heavily explain why old ones are needed (and even then it severely weakens the point). I too was extremely confused with your examples.

Sure there should be charity in reading but the default assumption is not that your examples are 26 years old. Many people here were either children or not even born yet.

⬐ ElBarto

Even if those examples are old-ish, anyone should understand the point if they actually tried.

As for being children... You don't say.

⬐ slededit

If your only examples are 25+ years old then the question becomes why are there no contemporary examples for this supposedly common phenomena. Its not a good rhetorical tactic. Nor is insulting other participants in the conversation.

⬐ ElBarto

These are not 'my examples', these are the ones from Al Ries book. It does not mean that there are no examples of it right now. Examples illustrate a point, they are not the point.

In fact, as mentioned the fact that there is sometimes not even space for a second brand right now illustrates the relevance of the insight.

What is insulting is the laziness and arrogance here.

⬐ slededit

Well I think we're past being constructive, but don't you find it at all arrogant to demand people invest time researching your comments? There are thousands of comments made here every day. We're not peer reviewing articles here - comments should stand on their own.

⬐ ElBarto

These weren't my comments... I was explaining the examples given by a quoted classic book by Al Ries, which someone apparently better qualified than Al Ries thought were all wrong.

You apparently haven't followed at all or made any effort. Quite extraordinary to see that on HN.

⬐ cbsmith

> These examples were picked in the early 1990s, and are specific to the US market. Things change.

...like whether that claim is well founded or not.

⬐ ElBarto

In the tech sector this has often reduced to 1 single brand instead of 2.

The worst mistake we engineers tend to make is to dismiss the 'wisdom' of professional marketers and branding experts...

⬐ ummonk

It's odd to see the traditional industry of the "big three" automakers being used as evidence for the "law of duality"...

⬐ ElBarto

It's not odd when you look at the link I posted that shows that the 3rd of the "Big Three" was much smaller than the other 2 in terms of volume and brand.

⬐ ummonk

In 1990, GM had 35%, Ford 23%, and Chrysler 12% of the US market. That doesn't seem like an overwhelming dominance by GM and Ford.

A long time ago I read a book called "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" [1] and one of them was don't get caught up with couponing (i.e. sales). They are like drugs: they quickly increase revenue, but now you are dependent on them to get revenue. I like how this exec thinks. (I also like how they'll round up prices to the nearest dollar)

[1] http://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing-Violate/dp... (not an affiliate link)

So does the book "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" ( http://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing-Violate/dp... ).

It essentially claims that a brand should not try to be all things to all people. Different brands, however, can. For a good discussion, see: http://www.codemyownroad.com/circumventing-the-law-of-line-e...

Edit: I see the book is written by the same author. Probably no coincidence.

⬐ nextparadigms

Yeah, I think I've read about a dozen of his books. But there's also such thing as "halo effect" (I think there's a book on this, too). Take the "i" letter for all Apple products now. It works the same way.

The halo effect makes it so all the children products benefit from the main product's influence, but it can also work the other way around, so they have to be very careful not to brand a crappy product like that, because then it will end up affecting all the others in a negative way.

It's also very important that they keep re-inventing themselves at least every 10 years (like Google is doing now). Because otherwise they risk becoming "the product my dad used", or uncool like that. Who thinks Yahoo is still cool now? 13-14 years ago they were "the Internet".

You should check out The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (http://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing-Violate/dp...)

It's all about carving out your own unique niche in the marketplace and in the consumer's mind.

You'd be surprised just how much your app and outlook will change once you put a unique spin on your offering and focus every feature around it, instead of trying to play catchup with the other guys.

Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion by Cialdini.

http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Busine...

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing - Violate Them at Your Own Risk!

http://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing-Violate/dp...

Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to We Usability, by Steve Krug:

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/032134...

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large Scale Web Sites, by Paul Rosenfeld and Peter Morville:

http://www.amazon.com/Information-Architecture-World-Wide-We...

Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, by Paco Underhill

http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Buy-Shopping-Updated-Internet/d...

And at least one Jakob Nielsen Usability book.

I've been trying to get through a book a week recently, and not quite succeeding. Here's the three I'm going through right now (no affiliate links):

Arabian Nights, Hussain Haddawy's translation. Hilarious and many life lessons, strongly recommended. http://www.amazon.com/Arabian-Nights-New-Deluxe/dp/039333166...

Healthy at 100, John Robbins. Just started, looks promising. http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-100-Scientifically-Healthiest-...

The Psychology of Self Esteem, Nathaniel Branden. Gosh, Branden's so smart, I just wish he'd use smaller words and sentences so I could get his general ideas faster. http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Self-Esteem-Revolutionary-A...

I just gave up on "Execution" by Larry Bossidy, it seems good but I wasn't connecting with it right now.

I read "Katsuno's Revenge and Other Tales of the Samurai" recently, which was a good, short book. It's like 120 pages, with six stories or so. A few of them were interesting, a few didn't speak to me, but overall worth a read. You'll learn some underpinnings of Japanese culture from it. (Also, it's only $9 on Amazon right now, can just add to cart for next order) - http://www.amazon.com/Katsunos-Revenge-Other-Tales-Samurai/d...

Finished "The Samurai Banner of Furin Kazan" recently - very interesting, it's a look at the more political machinations and presents a dirtier, less ethical picture of the great strategists in the Sengoku era. http://www.amazon.com/Samurai-Banner-Classics-Japanese-Liter...

Don't start with it if you're not familiar with the era, though, you'll get the general sense wrong. I'd recommend start with Eiji Yoshikawa if you like Japanese history and want to learn more - of course, start with "Musashi", which is fantastic. If you really like it, "Taiko" is good too.

Musashi (my favorite book, huge for people who have lots of potential and are having a hard time dealing with people close to them because of it) - http://www.amazon.com/Musashi-Eiji-Yoshikawa/dp/4770019572/r...

Taiko (start with Musashi, if you like it a lot, pick up Taiko) - http://www.amazon.com/Taiko-Eiji-Yoshikawa/dp/4770026099/ref...

Also, finished The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing which is the best business book I've read in a long time. Short, simple, to the point. Highly recommended. http://www.amazon.com/22-Immutable-Laws-Marketing-Violate/dp...