I agree the rollout is a little bumpy but I'm curious what workloads you are using k8s for where a $74/mo (or $300/mo) bill isn't a rounding error in your capex?
My problem is that this fee doesn't look very "cloud" friendly. Sure the folks with big clusters won't even notice it, but others will sweat it.
The appeal of cloud is that costs increase as you go, and flat rates are typically there to add predictability (see BigQuery flat rate). This fee does the opposite.
This cost increases rapidly for those scenarios.
This makes it seem like Google Cloud for Startups is aimed at startups that aren't really on a shoestring budget.
Or, better yet, don't use k8s. You don't need it, especially as a startup on a shoestring budget. You can migrate later if you decide you really need to, but just a plain LAMP gets you 99% of the way.
Around the time "Google Cloud Platform" became a thing, Google changed GAE from an encapsulated bubble into a basic frontend management system that interacts with normal services through public APIs (either inside or outside GCP). It's more expensive than GCE, but it's fully managed and lets you skip the devops team.
So I guess the big question in my mind is how do you run containerized apps in the major clouds besides K8s if it's a bulldozer and you just need a cargo bike? Is there something simpler?