Google doesn't realize that this isn't why AWS is winning. AWS has better support, more services, more options and is easier to use.
AWS does seem to have less problems (excluding this past week), and they do offer more (and sometimes better) services.
You're exactly right about the "technical salesperson mindset". It's awesome see new features come out several times a year that feel like direct response to our feedback. Google is impressive, but I don't get the feeling they would be as responsive to customer requests.
Can't say I've found this to be the case. We spend a minor fortune each month, have premium support, and get really poor help. I thought mostly everyone agreed AWS support stinks.
Part of the problem, I've realized, is we are not contacting support for trivial, common items. Rather we engage with them on outages in their service (ahem "elevated error rates"). On these and other similarly complex issues, their front-line support staff is ill equipped and they mostly resort to saying "I've escalated to the service team."
What could we do to make this better? I'm super serious; I talk to customers every day, and we're working hard to deliver a platform (all of it - product, docs, support, sales, customer advocacy, OSS, etc) that exceeds expectations and delivers results. What could we do to impress you from a customer engagement standpoint?
Need to prove this with some data
- more services - more options
Sure, because of earlier start.
- and is easier to use
How do you measure the ease of use? APIs? Documentation? Management UI?
So? AWS will always have that head start. If GCP can't catch up to or beat AWS on features, or find some way to differentiate from AWS, that's always going to be an AWS advantage. Customers buy based on what's best for them, not by comparing what two services look like at the same point in their lifespan.