Ask HN: Why is Google Cloud not allowed for individuals in Europe?

[gtirloni]

https://cloud.google.com/free/docs/frequently-asked-questions

"f you are located in the European Union and the sole purpose for which you want to use Google Cloud Platform services has no potential economic benefit you should not use the service. If you have already started using Google Cloud Platform, you should discontinue using the service."

[simon_acca]

I remember seeing a comment by a Google employee saying that there is some sort of bureaucratic issue and they were working on it. It was either here on HN or stackoverflow, will report back if I find it again!

[andriussev]

As far as I remembered, this started when EU started forcing companies to pay VAT taxes depending on the customer's country. Maybe it was not worth the hassle?

This seems to persist with other Google products. Ex, API, Firebase.

[ajeet_dhaliwal → andriussev]

This is exactly the reason we don't allow individuals in Europe to sign up at Tesults. Companies with a VAT number are accepted.

I'm honestly surprised if this is the reason Google does it too, we made the decision because it was not worth the hassle but we are hardly Google sized! I thought they'd be able to handle this just fine.

[simon_acca → ajeet_dhaliwal]

This[0] might be of interest for you then, they basically handle the European localized-VAT compliance for you and it should be as simple to integrate as, say, stripe payments. It looks promising, I plan to use it, but have no experience with it yet.

As for the idea that VAT MOSS is what keeps google cloud from entering the private market, I agree that it's improbable given Google's size, they have figured it out already for other products after all.

0: https://quaderno.io/

[jon-wood → ajeet_dhaliwal]

I could believe that for business focused products like Google Cloud its not worth the admin overhead for the revenue they'll get from individuals hacking on side projects.

[ProblemFactory → andriussev]

It seems strange that Google would have trouble with EU VAT rules for developer products. They seem to handle it fine for consumer-facing products like the Play Store.