Cloud Comparison – Amazon Web Services (AWS) vs Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

 The “Google Cloud vs AWS” topic is a common discussion argument in all leading Cloud forum. Many people think that Google Cloud Platform is the biggest and strongest competitor to the AWS supremacy. On the other side, they also know about the impressive numbers that AWS has on its side, and the huge advantage compared to its competitors. So, many people are wondering who will be the winner of this Google Cloud vs AWS competition, to better understand what platform they should focus their learning efforts on.

Google Cloud vs AWS: the available services

One of the biggest differences among the two platforms is the amount of services being available on each. From this point of view, AWS is the clear winner. The quantity and quality of the services available on AWS is extremely broad and wide, and it builds up a huge set of opportunities for many different needs. There are specific tools for media transcoding and Streaming, a managed Directory Service, 4+ different relational and NoSQL databases, and even a Desktops in the Cloud service (WorkSpaces) that provides remote Windows desktops. The various services are well integrated, and they provide a very comprehensive cloud service. If you don’t mind locking yourself into a single vendor, AWS has no rivals about the completeness of its platform and the productivity level that you can reach thanks to it.

On the other side, Google Cloud Platform’s list of product is way smaller, and mostly focused on classic IaaS and PaaS services. The latter is probably the area where Google focused most of its efforts, given that Google App Engine has been the first service ever launched in GCP. Nevertheless, you can find the usual IaaS computing, object storage, relational and non relational databases too, and a few more services for DNS and Endpoints. The difference among the two competitors is huge here. How much it impacts on your architecture mostly depends on what your needs are. Chances are that the services provided by GCP can suffice for most common needs, and as we will see very soon, Google Compute Engine has many strength and pros that AWS is lacking.

Why Google Cloud Engine (GCE) may be better than EC2

An area where Google might beat AWS is the IaaS computing platform, probably the most important service for both. EC2 is an amazing service, despite its many quirks, but Google really did an excellent job in creating a valid competitor. For example, one thing that I really appreciated in GCE is how the “Pay per use” concept is taken to the extreme. The OPEX model is a major strength point of any cloud service, So why should I round up the usage of my EC2 instance to the hour and pay for the whole fee if I used it for a smaller fraction of time? Google Compute Engine bills in minute-level increments (apart for a 10 minutes’ minimum charge), so you always pay exactly for what you use.

Other nice GCE features too can be very interesting in same cases. For example, GCE’s persistent disk can be attached to multiple instances in read-only mode, an opportunity that is not available in AWS and allows to distribute data to a large workforce effectively.

What makes AWS as strong contender for Cloud Business

Despite the comparison in the paragraphs above may seem strongly leaning towards GCE, AWS still has many cards to play in the Google Cloud vs AWS challenge. First and foremost, Google still lacks the widespread geographical distribution that AWS has.

I’m personally fond of AWS, and that would probably be my favorite choice, mostly because of the large variety of services available there. Nevertheless, I had a chance to play a little bit with GCE recently, and I’ve been impressed by the clean interface of the management console.

I will recommend that you should Learn both, practice with both, then make your choice. That’s probably the best way to understand what is the best cloud platform around.