# Google Cloud 161 Hacker News commenters recommended Google Cloud and 403 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 9 years (13 owners). **Verdict:** Praised as a technically strong, developer-friendly cloud with cleaner IAM and tooling than AWS, but critics agree support is poor and account and billing problems erode trust. ## Why people recommend it - More ergonomic than AWS (4 comments): "They have the most ergonomic cloud of the big three, then absolutely murder it by having this kind of reputation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48201884)) "much better overall CLI experience, leading to a pleasurable experience developing against it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47959702)) "Google Cloud Platform is way more convenient to use than AWS, the IAM is way better designed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46491988)) - Technically excellent engineering (4 comments): "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." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48220975)) "I have a lot of respect for GCP as an engineering artifact, but a significantly less rosy opinion of GCP as an organization" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47621736)) "GCP had second mover advantage in that they got to build a lot of constructs to segment identity" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45879336)) - Reliable infrastructure (3 comments): "Three fresh deployments looked almost boring. Which is probably exactly what you want from a $512/month VM." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48372164)) "I've never lost a disk on GCP, I've never even had an instance stop once without me telling it to stop." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49214668)) "large companies (and startups) are happy to pay a premium for the support, reputation, and reliability" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48983732)) - Well-designed IAM and project isolation (3 comments): "GCP had second mover advantage in that they got to build a lot of constructs to segment identity" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45879336)) "Google Cloud Platform is way more convenient to use than AWS, the IAM is way better designed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46491988)) "GCP projects are free and provide strong security boundaries, so use them liberally" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47162273)) ## What people warn about - Poor customer support (6 comments): "Beyond the offensive aspect of GCP offering no support if we aren't willing to cough up a non-trivial percentage of our spend" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48203109)) "Google still treats its customers like it views them as a steaming, fly-covered pile of crap" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48457991)) "GCP was never known for their support and deprecation of services was always a huge risk" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48213985)) - Distrust of Google as organization (3 comments): "I have a lot of respect for GCP as an engineering artifact, but a significantly less rosy opinion of GCP as an organization" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47621736)) "They have the most ergonomic cloud of the big three, then absolutely murder it by having this kind of reputation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48201884)) "Google still treats its customers like it views them as a steaming, fly-covered pile of crap" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48457991)) - Confusing billing, no spending caps (4 comments): "Google should provide easy tools to actually cap spending, instead of recommending you set quota limits on your APIs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47868341)) "no way to change the billing info to our current account and also no way (not by us, not by google support) to figure out what these payments are actually for" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46228945)) "it's useless if, like you say, they have shitty rate limiting and measurement so that you're way over the limit before they stop you." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47768432)) - Expensive compared to alternatives (3 comments): "The big 3 are costing you as if it's still 2009, and they don't change this because people have an irrational attachment to overpaying." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46818099)) "I remember trying out GCP for some simple html or django thing a decade ago and it cost me $30/mo or something and I said nah." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46379691)) "For the money you'd spend on AWS/Azure/GCP in a year, in most cases you can get the equivalent refurbished servers you'd need" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46024135)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Amazon Web Services (AWS)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amazon-web-services.md): 248 recommend - [Microsoft Azure](https://hackerapproved.com/p/microsoft-azure.md): 153 recommend - [Scaleway](https://hackerapproved.com/p/scaleway.md): 70 recommend - [Oracle Cloud Free Tier](https://hackerapproved.com/p/oracle-cloud.md): 70 recommend - [OVHcloud](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ovhcloud.md): 16 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://cloud.google.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Google Cloud", https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-cloud-platform/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).