It's not really impressive to me in absolute terms that GCP grew by 34% because it's still in last place behind Azure. I worked with all three major CSPs at a past company and Google, by far, had the worst support, the worst network, the most issues, and at the same time they were the least willing to build custom features for us while Azure and AWS would constantly fight for our business.
IMHO I think Microsoft is a lot closer in terms of creating a real business around AI because they understand Enterprise customers. In fact they were first to offer private OpenAI deployments with AuthN/AuthZ that you could drop in your own VPC and the ability to handle sensitive data while everyone else was handing out API keys off a public endpoint like a startup. Don't get me wrong Google has had some okay technology (i.e. Gemini 2.5 is middle of the pack) but they seem like a very consumer-oriented company and don't seem to know how to market them.
Maybe I was not at your scale but I’ve had the exact opposite experience with GCP. I would prefer to use it but now I work at an all AWS shop.
I have used the major hyperscalers for years. I agree with you that Google is the worst business partner, but saying they have the worst network and more issues does not align with my experience at all. Azure is miles behind on technical prowess.
I build tools for our security teams, I guarantee you the only reason we use Microsoft Azure is corporate deals. All the critical infrastructure is on AWS (including our Azure monitoring tools), and if we could move from Azure to GCP all our security experts would be happy (except maybe the red team members whose job would be harder)
You’re being way too dismissive of the importance of sales, customer support, inertia and reputation are when it comes to technology choices.
Google loses on all of those fronts.