

Google Cloud Platform free for 60 days - stickhandle
https://cloud.google.com/free-trial/

======
forgottenacc56
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?

~~~
downandout
Agreed. I was once wronged by Google Checkout (before it closed, obviously). I
couldn't get any response at all from the company, so I called a few numbers
and eventually a random developer at Google looked up and gave me the name and
phone number for the director of Google Checkout. I posted the number in a few
forums where other incredibly frustrated merchants were looking for help.

Instead of getting some people to respond to the messages these people
apparently left, within a day, the number was disconnected. _That_ is how they
tend to deal with customer service issues.

~~~
riobard
Not to defend Google's attitude towards customer service, but you do realize
it's inappropriate to post someone's work phone number as a public-facing
custom support line, right?

------
rey12rey
This has been around for quite sometime[1].

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.

Oh and there's the $100000 for Startups[2] that'd be cool to get at some point
in time.

1: [[http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/11/google-
cloud...](http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/11/google-cloud-
platform-live-introducing-container-engine-cloud-networking-and-much-
more.html?m=1)]

2:
[[https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/](https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/)]

------
bla2
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.

------
frostmatthew
The submission's title is somewhat misleading, it's _$300 in credit to use for
60 days_. 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].

[N.B. I work on vCloud Air]

[1] [http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-
trial/](http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/)

[2] [http://vcloud.vmware.com/service-offering/special-
offer](http://vcloud.vmware.com/service-offering/special-offer)

[3] [http://aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/free-
trial/](http://aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/free-trial/)

~~~
simonebrunozzi
I work for vCloud Air too. Nice to see you on HN Matthew :)

------
ridruejo
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
[http://google.bitnami.com](http://google.bitnami.com) (Disclaimer, I am one
of the founders)

------
teraflop
For new customers only, apparently.

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?

------
imaginenore
I find Google Cloud ridiculously expensive.

I can get a VPS for $1.5 per month and it will have 50GB SSD, 1GB RAM, 2 CPU
cores, 1 Gbps link.

Google Cloud's cheapest server, f1-micro, costs $7.3/month, comes with 0.6GB
RAM, a shared CPU, and zero storage.

~~~
tapirl
which VPS provider?

~~~
imaginenore
[http://lowendbox.com/blog/boltvm-18year-1gb-
and-36year-2gb-o...](http://lowendbox.com/blog/boltvm-18year-1gb-
and-36year-2gb-openvz-vps-in-piscataway-or-los-angeles/)

That's just an example. There are even cheaper ones out there.

~~~
jauer
That's actually pretty big apples and oranges, not including the difference
between a relatively static VM and on-demand instances (GCE, EC2).

It's OpenVZ, not KVM so you're getting a container, not a VM. That might be
better for some people, or make no difference, but it's a important
distinction. You're stuck with the host's kernel. This can make distro
choice/upgrade interesting. RAM overcommit on the host side is easier, etc.

You aren't buying 50GB of SSD storage. You're buying 50GB of RAID10 spinning
disk with SSD cache.

No mention if 1Gbps uplink is the host's uplink or if you get 1Gbps uplink out
of a link bundle on the server. Given the other things, I'd suspect host has 1
or 2 GigE connections that you're sharing. That could be a big deal if one VM
can saturate a significant portion of the server's network capacity.

I'm sure it's fine for a normal blog, secondary DNS server, or something like
that but once you go below ~$5/mo on low-end VM/container hosting there tend
to be gotchas.

