I don't think that's completely fair. They do provide the 300USD credit, valid for 12 months after sign-up. And in response to another commenter below, in many countries I believe they allow sign-up for this trial with a bank account (they deposit a small sum and you verify receipt with the amount deposited). I have not tried this.

I provided my credit card for the trial. I was notified of the impending end of the trial, and was billed no further.

I do agree that the inability to set hard limits on usage is frustrating and somewhat concerning, however. Especially as they're apparently able to do so through the aforementioned trial termination mechanism.

And I further agree that, outside of this trial period, this policy does discourage experimentation. And that it is somewhat un-Google-like; somewhat surprising as I believe they're considered an underdog relative to AWS; and a bit disappointing.

This is true for all google cloud services. You have to enter a credit card number. You may 'intend' to use just 20$ a month and I believe you can set quota alerts, but you can't set a hard budget. Google will just bill for whatever you consumed.

I think that's ridiculous. It should deal-breaker problem for anyone running on a side project.

Can't you use a throwaway/generated credit-card?

Privacy.com and other virtual cards register as prepaid cards and are blocked by google.

That sucks. If inflexibility already shows at the entrance, then I'm not going to enter the place.

Hey, just to chime in. I'm a MSFTie, so no relevence to G, but have worked on products with similar limitations, and was usually the one arguing _against_ the CC friction at login.

What has become abundantly clear however is that CC gating is a fast way to reduce your malicious traffic _exponentially_; and especially if you're enterprise focused, this doesn't even impact your core strata much.

As a non-corporate-techie in my off-work-time, I absolutely understand the frustration at this inflexibility. During my day job where I'd have to clean up the fires that result from a fully open door policy however? I'd have a somewhat different take.

It's not 100% clear cut "the CC is all just to add spurious friction", is all I mean to say :)

Also I don't know if I'm missing something, but I just set up a small test site with a small amount of user traffic (<1k requests in total).

I totally can't tell how much this could cost me; I'm pretty sure I'm still under the free quota limit, but I can't see how far I'm into it. I see that there are requests being logged in the API metrics, but the billings pages show 0 usage across all the same metrics.

Right, and to even get an API key for experimentation you have to provide a credit card number, which a lot of students wouldn't have.

At this point I don't think they're really interested in accommodating students.

Couldn't you provide an e-card with a 1€ limit?

You would not be charged more but then would maybe be in breach of the contract passed with Google (?)

Sounds like a good way to get your Google account banned.

Which will then proceed to ban all related accounts that they suspect are yours too (so they try to ban a person, not an account). And god help you if it was work account or a linked one.

> Another problem with Google that you cannot really experiment with it for free. You have to add your credit card and there is no concept of using only the free quota.

We're here to help on that one. :) We strongly believe development and educational use should be painless, so testing locally (just use the right link!) or signing up for the free tier is as simple as possible.