A few months ago Google organized Iberian Google Cloud Platform Tour 2014 and I was lucky enough to manage a place there. I had not played too much with Google Cloud previously but I was considering some of their tools potentially useful for my work at Platform161 and, who knows, maybe also for some of those dozens of pet projects that are always around my mind.
So the first step was of course creating an account there and filling some billing information. They provided us with a code that would allow us to spend some money with the Google Cloud tools without needing to pay. I decided to keep that code for the moment I had more time to use their tools with some real project, and I think that it was worth it as at the end of the day I had spent 0,01 $.
Sadly, I’m still looking for the free time that will allow me to work on those personal projects (as a lot of people, I would need days with 48 hours to be able to do half of the things that I want!), so I was really surprised when I received a new email from Google:
So Google is in my computer, in my mobile phone and now it is also in my head and it knows me better than myself! They have discovered that all of us we are always thinking on the money that we will get from something, who cares open source or community things! We shouldn’t as we are not getting revenues from that!
But that’s not all what Google said in the email:
That’s why Google Cloud doesn’t want me, they are not interested on me continue using their tools unless I expect to get some money with my projects, and I don’t think that they will serve for anything else than practicing, testing new technologies and maybe, helping someone else.
I think that the last paragraph of the email has the answer of this change in their mind:
Everything looks to be around the VAT. If I’m not doing business, I shouldn’t take care of handling any VAT, but Google doesn’t want to worry about my taxes, so this was the “nicest” solution they found. These are business, and with a personal use, you are not going to make them win more money!
Google, you used to be cool!
