5 reasons why you should choose Google Cloud Platform

Let's address the elephant in the room - Google Cloud Platform is well and truly the underdog, with a comparative tiny share in comparision on AWS and Azure. However, dig a little deeper and there is some compelling reasons why GCP might be a wise decision.

Simplictly

What was one of Google's biggest selling points as it emerged all those years ago (for those of you old enough to remember)? Simplicity! A clean uncluttered lightweight expeience gave their search engine a snappy experience (even on dialup), a refreshing  feel and was easy to use. In my opinion, GCP embodies alot of these principles. Comparing to AWS, it looks like some serious UX effort has gone into GCP - consistent interface across the board, less options (that's a good thing), logical groupings.

The GCP service offering seems to strike a good balance between matching their competitors and keeping it very lean.

Awesome score - 8/10

Projects

The encapsulation of deployed services into a project is very nice. Azure has had a similar concept too. Yes AWS has Resource Groups, however, being driven by tags makes compliance one step harder. Having to be 'in' the project to create the service in GCP means there is no risk that a deployment isn't atributed to a project, although I would agree not necessarily the right one.

Awesome score 9/10

Kubernetes

With Google's status as the 'founding parent' of Kubernetes it comes as no suprise that GCP's Managed Kubernetes option simply 'feels' the best. GKE has a good stream of bleeding edge features coming through and some seriously cool features. Take for example, Binary Authorization, as metioned in SecOps from the Start if you need / want extra assurances of what you are running in your k8s cluster. AWS EKS in comparision feels very much like a 'offering because we have to' solution, not becasue they want to.

Using GCP for managed k8s is a finanacily wise move at the moment too, with no cluster management fee like you would encounter with AWS.

So far, k8s on GCP has been the least frustrating time I have had using it. Let's be honest, yes k8s is cool but boy can it be a beast to tame!

Awesome score 10/10

Cost

AWS is the well established leader. They have the scope to be complacent in the pricing of their products (NAT Gateway, cough cough). GCP being the underdog is cost agressive and depending on your workload, you will find your bill to be lower, thanks fo cheaper prices, per minute pricing and some features not being chargeable (i.e Kubernetes Control Plane).

A few awesome points lost here for the scope of the free tier being smaller than AWS' very generous offering.

Awesome score 8/10

Because it's Google

I am not generally one to bandwagon jump, however, Google has shown themselves to be one of the leading engineering organisations in the Internet era and should be given a fair hearing on what their offer is. Having a cloud offering comparable to their competitors, along with access to Google's own services  (BigQuery, App Engine) is a win-win in my book.

Overall Score 9/10

Bring on the healthy competition!