Why is Bitmagic not using Google Cloud?

Bitmagic is launching open beta in just 5 weeks, and we are finalizing the live setup to be sure we can handle massive amounts of users. One of the critical components is cloud hosting for our AI processing and multiplayer games. Our setup is now based on dual cloud-providers, AWS and Azure, to be sure there are no hiccups.

Our service relies heavily on cloud processing, as in addition to hosting multiplayer games, we use generative AI to build game worlds, 3D objects, code and in fact, full games. We have built one of the most advanced generative AI solutions, so naturally we tend to use a lot of cloud processing.

This setup with AWS and Azure is a little surprising to me, as all of our infrastructure is built on Google. Our emails, calendars, etc., use Google services. So why not use Google Cloud?

Well… there’s a story.

We applied for the Google Startup program and were approved, and we received a generous allocation of cloud credits. This was an entry point to a scale up program that would provide plenty of support (mostly in the form of credits that would end up in the hundreds of thousands of dollars) along the way.?

I think it’s a really clever way to get startups connected to the ecosystem so that once they grow, they already have a trusted service provider.

We configured everything to run on Google Cloud, and things were fine.?

But then we made a mistake: One team member departed, and I terminated their Google email account. As you do. Instantly, our cloud stopped working.

It turned out that this departed team member had been our only billing contact in the Google Cloud setup. Oops. But no big deal, right? Just add another contact. Right??

We learned three crucial things the hard way:

1. If you delete the Google email account that is your only billing contact in Google Cloud, that Cloud account is instantly terminated and there is absolutely no way to fix this. You cannot add another billing contact, and even if you restore the original billing email, the damage is already done. The Cloud account is permanently closed.
2. If you were assigned credits to the Google Cloud account that was shut down after you accidentally deleted the billing contact, those credits are gone for good. There is no person in the Google organization with powers to fix this. Or so we are told, and after trying this for a long time, I tend to believe it is true.
3. If you lost your Cloud Credits, there’s no way to start from the beginning and be approved again. It doesn’t matter that you lost them because of a simple mistake like the one I described above. The situation could have been avoided by having more than one billing contact, but we didn’t know this.?

In most organizations, this could have been easily fixed by someone in customer service, but at Google we were told that since we’re a small startup, we don’t actually have a customer service representative, so nobody in the organization really “owns” the account.

I have been doing Bitmagic demos to multiple different departments at Google, and the feedback has been great. Everyone loves the product and wants to know if they can help out. Except for one thing - nobody is able to help fix the Cloud Credits.

Don’t get me wrong - people at Google have been very friendly and many people inside Google have done a lot of work trying to help us. We’ve climbed higher and higher in the organization, but the end result is always the same: there is absolutely no way in the world to fix this. With all the power and might Google has, this is one of those things that cannot be changed.

We look forward to working with Google in other areas, but fortunately AWS and Azure have welcomed us with open arms to their Cloud services. We have been paying for Google Cloud until now, but the service has been in closed alpha testing and we have been able to control the amount of traffic, so this has not been an issue.

With open access, anything can happen, so we need to take this into consideration. Even if you ignore the credits, the thought that the account can be permanently closed just like that, doesn't help build confidence for live service. So, earlier this week we made a decision to pull the plug and transfer to other cloud providers.

Why are credits so important, you might ask? Cloud services can be quite expensive, and the cost is difficult to predict ahead of time. When we launch, we might get hundreds of thousands, millions or even more people access our services in the first month. We will launch with limited monetization which should cover the cost of running the service from day one, but revenue always comes with some delay.?

The Cloud Credits allow launching with some piece of mind - even if traffic scales up quickly, the credits help us handle through the first months while we wait for the revenue to ramp up.

I’d like to stress that aside from this one detail, we have been happy with Google Cloud services, and everyone at Google has been wonderful. I definitely recommend their services, but learn from our mistakes! Always have at least two billing contacts, and always check before deleting accounts. I’ve never seen anything like this before, but believe me, this is all too real.