It's funny because Google pretty much invented this model that users want and love. App Engine was launched in 2008, before GCP, before docker and before Cloud was a term, basically. It had a globally replicated persistence layer, job queues, auth, scale to 0, a generous free tier, a fully fledged local dev server and a single command to deploy, and all config lived in a single file. At the time it was really innovative, and attracted a lot of hip startup- and college grad types.

The reason people liked it is, imo, because it was a single product with multiple features. GCP OTOH, has been about decoupling (or loosely coupling) the product suite, and users are supposed to pick and choose from a giant array of half-products. Simply being aware of all products, their interoperability and predicting the cost is a full time job, easily (it's mostly large enterprise who can absorb that cost). There's nothing wrong with the pick-and-choose model, if your products are simple, low level, and interoperable. But the product suite has grown organically, seemingly without coherence, so there's very little in terms of paved paths to walk – it's so confusing. When a shining star like Firebase comes along (2014) Google clearly knows not to mess with it too much. But even Firebase isn't strong enough to resist the gravitational pull of the GCP behemoth.