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Comment by netcyrax | Hacker News Reader

So if there's something always running .... isn't the same as having on always on server (with auto scaling of some sort)?

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When a container is kept warm via " min-instances" but is not receiving requests ("idle"), its CPU costs 10x less than when it's actively processing requests, see pricing: https://cloud.google.com/run/pricing

How is this cost saving achieved? At the risk of being reductive, surely the container is either in memory and ready to serve requests or it isn't?

You still pay for RAM, just not CPU.

Interesting, if an idle CPU costs 10x less, it ends up costing the same as 1 GB of memory, which amounts to about US$ 6/month each (Tier 1 pricing).

For an app with low usage, you start getting a price that can compete with Heroku.

I don't see the pricing for idle billable time disclosed on that site, only an indication that there is pricing. Am I missing it, or alternatively, could it be clarified?

It seems they want to replace their managed AppEngine service through Cloud Run in the long run.

Cloud run is developed by the same team that built AppEngine. They share the same technical leadership and a lot of the technical stacks, for example, billing and security (gVisor).

I dont think it's that simple to replace one service with another. It requires a lot of very sensitive dealing with external customers. And one cannot (easily) use the typical "Google deprecation" on a Cloud service offering, either.

So it's complicated. But your impression is not too far from the inclination.

I’d imagine google would at-least make both appEngine run on the same core primitives that cloud run uses. So while the public facing api is the same, the internals are replaced. At-least that’s how I’d approach it. Deprecate app-engine in that it will be infinitely supported until the last customer, but all new stuff is advocated to be used on cloud run.

This definitely appears to be their trajectory.

One would assume transition from AppEngine to Cloud Run would be directed by establishing a pricing differential that incentivises moving off AppEngine.

Yes but still marginally easier to get it up and running

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