In contrast, I trust that if I run code on AWS, it'll actually run the code I give it.
These are solvable problems, but important to think about.
Now, there are definitely use cases where you don't care; which would be a cool application for this; but unless we figure out how to do homomorphic computing, this doesn't seem immediately likely to impact cloud computing prices; even if it was cheaper to simply use excess compute capacity (which I'm not convinced it is).
The economics of people letting you use their browser doesn’t make sense. The pay is crap and the time when they are browsing is exactly when they would not want their computer doing a bunch of background processing. You’re better off letting people rent out their CPU time through a dedicated application when they are not using it. And remember electricity is not free.
Even then, it’d be tough to compete with AWS on pricing considering its spot instances do exactly this, even letting you bid for what you want to pay.
I should have explained this in my original post, but I figured it was obvious.
To suggest a solution: don’t offer payments at all but maybe instead gameify CPU time donation somehow. Maybe then you’ll have a better chance, but potentially less participation, unless people are donating to charitable causes. Either way it’s not going to do anything to affect AWS or Google Compute prices. Creating an entire startup just for the goal of getting some reduced prices on the actual compute platforms you want to use is madness. Just pay the money.
No it does not. AWS and "very cheap" simply don't belong in the same sentence.
AWS is a premium provider charging premium prices, they've essentially priced themselves as the most expensive provider on the market. It feels insane to describe them as "very cheap".
You might as well be calling a Bugatti Chiron "pretty cheap".
Any datacenter provider will be able to sell you compute time at a fraction of the cost of EC2. Look at OVH for example.
Henry David Thoreau