That is very interesting. As CRDB user, I priced Spanner (had to do some estimates during load testing), and Spanner came 3 times more expensive includign our eng salary to run CRDB
The project called for a minimum of 4 replicas and likely 8 vCPUs per, so right off the bat that's close to $60k/year before you even do anything. Plus the unwelcome addition of "license anxiety" to the whole development experience, and being forced to make a big decision up front.. it's not how I like to work or what a startup needs.