Google is at fault for how they handled it, but the parents comment is still good advice for anyone reading this thread.
I’m pointing to this as evidence https://cloud.google.com/customers
I feel like a lot of the problems that people run into with GCP are avoided with two main components.
Number one you should look seriously at the “enterprise” designation for different products and services if you are looking for long term stability and guarantees about the future (details: https://cloud.google.com/apis/docs/resources/enterprise-apis) and secondly you need to buy actual customer support as an add on if you want to avoid the “I had to hit the front page of HN to actually speak to someone” scenario https://cloud.google.com/support
the main problem with azure/aws/gcp is that their parent companies will track everything you and others do, and then close every related thing because they have enough market share to not give a fuck about you.
There are more than enough blog posts of enterprise customers running into random issues with the big thing, buying "big three, promise edition" isn't much of an assurance.
I'd suspect most of those customers have rapid migration plans written up. For a reason.
I can assure you from experience that most large customers do not. For either major cloud, most large customers will have adopted proprietary services like AWS Redshift or GCP's Cloud Bigtable or Bigquery. None of these have anything like the possibility of a "rapid migration".
Not sure what to say in response here…
I mean, it's an error.
Sure, it's infuriating, and in worst-case could financially harm (or cripple) your business. But Google didn't intend for it to happen. That makes no sense from a business perspective.
So, as others here suggest, you have to plan around the fact that mistakes like this can happen, especially when you're small.
In the car analogy it’s akin to looking the driver in the eyes and them signalling to you it’s safe to cross, only to hit the gas and run you over as you do. No amount of looking both ways before crossing would have saved you.
I would say the advice here is, wait until the car is basically stopped before you cross the street rather than trusting it will because you think all the signs say they will. I do think this is solid advice for the production systems as well. All the signs can point to yes, but making extra assurances to avoid the bad path is valid for something critical like your production systems (or your life).
you mean like an email literally saying they acknowledge the situation and won't suspend your account?
Most places outsource their support to global teams don't have access. If you have an AM , in many places, they receive the same notice you receive, also they will personally send it and address it to you with a reminder. They also have a lot more sway as the sales side of every company has the power so they can get around all the process issues.
As the other commenter posted above, if you can have an account manager where you have critical services, it will provide you safety at the cost of a higher spend or minimum spending amounts.
Edit: Had about $1mm in GCP spend and couldn't open a ticket to get windows running properly. It took a week to find the AM and a day after he had it fixed.
I'm not sure how successfully you've dealt with support with companies, but I have almost never been able to rely on the promises of a support agent, as they are simply not the ones actually making the decisions (in this case on whether your account gets suspended or not).
Regularly XYZ does not happen, or not exactly in the way you agreed. They cancel your broadband too late, or your internet starts a few weeks too late, etc. You can try to get compensation, or even sue, but some of the damage has already been done at that point. While this okay for temporarily overpaying broadband, this is probably not the case for a company's main production system, where the risk is very high. The company might not even survive to sue.