GCE is much simpler to use than EC2. Google came to the party late and they have seemed to take some time to not replicate AWSs annoyances.
I know, I know, AWS and Google Cloud is not DO and I agree. But would it hurt to introduce DO or Vultr style UX and make it easier for regular user to launch what he wants without all the expert language and need to jump in to documentation for hours?
Would button "Simple" and "Advanced" UI be really that hard to make?
I, as startup owner, dont really have time to focus on all the noise from large cloud providers, its easier to just launch 5 VPS with DO or Vultr and create my own infrastructure. And while I grow I doubt I will move my business to any of the cloud providers because I dont have time for it. Its easier to just build infrastructure on VPS's for $5 or just go for dedicated servers for backend.
I got 300$ in credits on every google account when I first vistited which allowed me to play around with their big data stuff and some public datasets, which was nice.