We've been building https://nimstrata.com/ for almost three years now, we put Google's Vertex AI product discovery algorithms on Shopify and Salesforce ecommerce storefronts.
At a high level, Google does not have a product culture, so there is a lot of white space for companies like ours to make adopting Google Cloud APIs much easier for less technical users.
It's also wild how much Agentic AI is creeping into all of our conversations - this space is constantly evolving as we're building.
The author touches on it briefly, but I'd argue that the cloud is immensely helpful for building (and tearing down) an MVP or proving an early market for a new company using startup credits or free tiers offered by all vendors. Once a business model has been proven, individual components and the underlying infrastructure can be moved out of the cloud as soon as cost becomes a concern.
This means that teams must make an up-front architectural decision to develop apps in a server-agnostic manner, and developers must stay disciplined to keep components portable from day one, but you can get a lot of mileage out of free credits without burning dollars on any infrastructure. The biggest challenge becomes finding the time to perform these migrations among other competing priorities, such as new feature development, especially if you're growing fast.
Our startup is mostly built on Google Cloud, but I don't think our sales rep is very happy with how little we spend or that we're unwilling to "commit" to spending. The ability to move off of the cloud, or even just to another cloud, provides a lot of leverage in the negotiating seat.
Cloud vendors can also lead to an easier risk/SLA conversation for downstream customers. Depending on your business, enterprise users like to see SLAs and data privacy laws respected around the globe, and cloud providers make it easy to say "not my problem" if things are structured correctly.
Honestly this rep and/or the rep's management should be held accountable. This is an oversight that comes from end-of-quarter pressure but it doesn't make it excusable.