They have not explained WHY their account was suspended. That's the most important part, imo. Cloud Providers don't suspend entire accounts for no reason.
They have not explained WHY their account was suspended. That's the most important part, imo. Cloud Providers don't suspend entire accounts for no reason.
> "Cloud Providers don't suspend entire accounts for no reason."
Maybe I'm getting old but here[1] is a HN comment from 17 years ago complaining about Google banning accounts "by mistake" and having no recourse but to post on HN and hope Matt Cutts sees it and helps, and saying "there are literally 1000s of such stories for many years all over the blogoshphere and forums" which is something I remember from HN of years ago.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=791004
And unfortunately nothing has changed since then regarding this.
The cloud provider in question - GCP - who also deleted a 125 billion dollar company's entire account on accident?
What company?
In May 2024, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) accidentally deleted the private cloud account and all backups belonging to UniSuper, an Australian pension fund managing over $125 billion.
I think that stretches what it means for a company to "be" a 125b company, but that is still awful.
They are a pension fund; they literally had/have US$125 billion dollars under management. What exactly is being stretched here? I can't for the life of me think of something that qualifies more for being a 125b company than actually having 125b in assets.
Having assets under management doesn't mean you have that money. You don't own it, you are just taking care of it for somebody. When describing a company as an $X billion company, conventionally this is referring to the market cap. You could use it to describe other things they possess if you wanted to, but assets they manage will never be something they possess.
Companies are described by revenue. UniSuper made $110 million recently. It deceptive to use the assets managed as the size since it makes it look like a much larger company. NVIDIA has revenue of $130 billion. $125 billion revenue would make it the largest company in Australia by a good amount.
> I can't for the life of me think of something that qualifies more for being a 125b company than actually having 125b in assets.
Which this company didn't. They managed 125b of assets belonging to other people, they didn't have 125b of their own.
> Cloud Providers don't suspend entire accounts for no reason.
You're joking, right?
LOL, did you woke up from the hibernation?
This is Google we're talking about. This absolutely happened many times in the past and will happen again.
Cloud Providers don't suspend entire accounts for no reason.
Oh...my. Just starting out in the industry, are we? Those of us who have been here for a while know reality is very different than newbie hopes and dreams. Once you've been burned for the n+1 time, that optimism will fade.
Google has suspended entire accounts countless times for absolutely no reason.
Unfortunately the cloud providers also rarely if ever tell you the reason.
Not defending them. but wouldn't it be a legal nightmare if they did?
My guess would be the credit card expired....
If it were something out of Railways hands, I think they would say something like "We have not yet identified the reason for the suspension, and are awaiting a response from Google".
At any company doing Enterprise work, you don't cut off someone for non payment without Account Manager doing multiple phone calls to whoever you have contact information for, emailing everyone listed on the account and whoever opened a support ticket and maybe even putting a banner in the panel with "ACCOUNT OVERDUE, CALL US TO SORT IT OUT!"
Generally it takes 30 days past due and complete no contact for anyone before suspension.
No one pays $2m invoices with credit cards.
it surprised me a lot when I first encountered it, but some organisations do :)
FTA:
> Google Cloud placed Railway’s production account into a suspended status incorrectly, as part of an automated action. This action extended to many accounts within Google Cloud. As this was a platform-wide action, there was no proactive outreach to individual customers prior to the restriction.
This might be 100% of what google told them.