GCP is basically just a toy. If you're hosting something important there you should probably not do that. It works as a Plan B, but by no means should Google be your Plan A.
I don't know what happened in this case, there's a chance it wasn't Google's fault but it doesn't matter, Google already lost all benefit of the doubt long ago.
Yeah this is the main argument I have for AWS. Is it the best tech-wise? Arguably not, but they have real support you can contact on a moment's notice, they'll even reach out ahead of time if they suspect something is seriously wrong.
Shopify is all on GCP and works well.
Shopify has $11 billion dollars in revenue. I assume that buys them at least an email address of a human at Google.
Nobody doubts Google's engineering ability. It's their soft skills that are lacking. Google is culturally unable to understand the concept of customers.
Xoogler here. This hits hard; right on the kidney.
That is a huge problem at Google: "we're google; we know what you want and need better than you do." That and an unshakable confidence in their own infallibility.
When I was there, I remember saying, "we do some cool stuff, but always remember that hubris is the death of empires."
I don't even mind about that. GCP is a perfectly good platform technically, it's ahead of AWS in some areas e.g. for k8s it's widely regarded to be the best.
The product is great. However I have GCP blacklisted because it's basically a vending machine. If your drink gets stuck in a vending machine all you can do is hit it hopelessly.
If I have a problem on AWS I'm fairly sure I can talk to a human and resolve it. As GP mentioned AWS support is pro-active and will even reach out to you of their own initiative. This gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.
Amazon understands that cloud services are a trust-based business. Their customers trust them with the power of life or death over their business.
Tbh, even if "you know what somebody wants better than they do" it's a moot point since people pay for what they _think_ they want.