Google has to do something extraordinary to prove it can provide adequate support. It's support reputation is absolutely abysmal - why would I build a business on system of a company that tries to not have human contact?
This has been around for quite sometime[1].<p>It's also cool to note that there are usually free credits involved in most Google Cloud competitions and some Google Udacity courses. Off the top of my head, I think I might have enjoyed a total of about $3000 since 2013.<p>Oh and there's the $100000 for Startups[2] that'd be cool to get at some point in time.<p>1: [<a href="http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/11/google-cloud-platform-live-introducing-container-engine-cloud-networking-and-much-more.html?m=1" rel="nofollow">http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/11/google-cloud...</a>]<p>2: [<a href="https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/" rel="nofollow">https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/</a>]
I signed up for this last month. Apparently only most things are free, as I got a bill for $4 after one month. I tried contacting support to figure out what's up with that. I haven't heard back yet.
The submission's title is somewhat misleading, it's <i>$300 in credit to use for 60 days</i>. Comparing to other IaaS trials this is better than Azure[1], the same amount but less time as vCloud Air[2], and difficult to compare directly with AWS[3].<p>[N.B. I work on vCloud Air]<p>[1] <a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/" rel="nofollow">http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/</a><p>[2] <a href="http://vcloud.vmware.com/service-offering/special-offer" rel="nofollow">http://vcloud.vmware.com/service-offering/special-offer</a><p>[3] <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/free-trial/" rel="nofollow">http://aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/free-trial/</a>
If you are getting started with Google cloud and looking for apps (WordPress, Drupal, etc) or dev environments (Rails, Node.js, PHP, etc.) give a try to the free Google Cloud Launchpad <a href="http://google.bitnami.com" rel="nofollow">http://google.bitnami.com</a> (Disclaimer, I am one of the founders)
For new customers only, apparently.<p>I've signed up for some of Google's cloud services in the past, but not their IaaS stuff, and never as a paid account. I wonder if it's safe to create a new account to get this free trial, or will that just risk getting my account banned?
I find Google Cloud ridiculously expensive.<p>I can get a VPS for $1.5 per month and it will have 50GB SSD, 1GB RAM, 2 CPU cores, 1 Gbps link.<p>Google Cloud's cheapest server, f1-micro, costs $7.3/month, comes with 0.6GB RAM, a shared CPU, and zero storage.