Google Cloud Platform - A Complete Guide

Introduction

For budding cloud developers and new users learning cloud for the first time, there is surprisingly little help available online in terms of documentation and resources. Before deep-diving into the Google Cloud Platform, it's important to brush up on your knowledge of cloud services. The term "cloud" refers to a platform where our servers are fully managed by another firm. The term "cloud" refers to the fact that we are attempting to reach a distributed network of hundreds or thousands of servers situated elsewhere, similar to a "cloud" of servers.

Developers often struggle with server storage issues and thus, the advantage of having unlimited data storage is what draws their attention to use cloud services. It is worth noting that the cost-effective advantage of cloud computing is driving adoption at many prominent research institutions.

There are many different cloud providers to select from, which might be intimidating at first. In the hindsight, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a popular cloud computing platform for various reasons; including its simple, user-friendly tools and services. Google Cloud Platform is the same platform that all the Google workers, including data scientists and researchers, use internally for their research work.

The scope of this comprehensive deep-dive blog covers the history of the Google Cloud Platform, the products and services it offers, its comparison with Microsoft Azure & AWS, and most importantly where it fits in the overall cloud market.

What is Google Cloud Platform (GCP)?

Google has evolved over time and presented a compelling value proposition that is gaining momentum. The Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a platform that offers over 90 technology services/products that can be used by a professional cloud developer and enterprises to operate more effectively and with greater flexibility.

The Google cloud products on the platform offer its consumers dependable, economical, user-friendly, and highly scalable cloud services. These services assist a person in storing data, as well as developers in developing, testing, and deploying their scalable applications. In terms of statistics, over 4 million apps use and rely on the Google Cloud Platform.

Nowadays, more and more companies (both small-scale and large-scale enterprises) are using the Google Cloud Platform since it delivers high security at a low cost. It is worth mentioning that the Google Cloud has strategically acquired Cornerstone Technologies to assist clients in transitioning their mainframe workloads to the Google Cloud Platform.

Google Cloud Platform History

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a collection of cloud services based on the Google App Engine framework for hosting web applications from Google's data centers. Amazon started its cloud service in 2006, and Google joined the fray two years later with its own cloud service. GCP has evolved into one of the world's main cloud computing platforms since the launch of Google App Engine in 2008, but it's still behind Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure in terms of market share. Nevertheless, Google continues to invest in GCP to make it more competitive with other public cloud providers and more appealing to large clients.

To capitalize on the growing interest in web applications, Google App Engine was introduced in April 2008 as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) resource that allowed developers to build and host apps on Google's infrastructure. App Engine was made accessible to 10,000 developers on a first-come, first-served basis in order to gather inputs and make changes to this preview edition. Apps could be executed by developers under the following parameters: 500 MB of storage, 200 million CPU megacycles per day, and 10 GB of bandwidth per day.

With the launch of Google App Engine, the company released a number of related technologies, including its data storage layer and its Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) component known as the Google Compute Engine, which allows the usage of virtual machines. After its success as an IaaS provider, Google launched other products including load balancer, DNS, monitoring tools, and data analysis services; making it more competitive in the cloud market. Ultimately, in November 2011, Google removed App Engine from preview mode and declared it a fully supported Google product. In 2013, the title "Google Cloud Platform" was formally adopted.

Why do we use the Google Cloud Platform? (Advantages)

• Competitive Pricing: Price is one of the key characteristics that distinguish Google Cloud from other cloud providers. Google Cloud has a monthly price model and offers reductions for long-term usage.
• Speed: Google Cloud offers network speeds of up to 10Tbs to its Google Cloud and Google App clients. The network includes links all over the world, including the United States, Europe, key Japanese cities, Asian hubs, and much more.
• Remote work: Employees of an organization can access information across devices from anywhere in the world through the web-based apps of Google cloud.
• Higher Productivity owing to quick innovation: Google releases updates on a weekly basis ensuring higher productivity and efficient work.
• Quick collaboration using Google Cloud: Users of an organization can access and work on a project at the same time as the data is stored elsewhere in the cloud servers instead of their local computers.
• Security: Google hires leading security experts and invests a lot in security to protect its customers and provide them with process-based and physical security.
• Higher reliability due to redundancy: In case of any server failure, or non-availability of any data center, the system immediately falls back on the secondary data center where the same data has been copied without any discrepancy.
• Control and Flexibility to users: With Google apps, users can control over technology and have ownership of their personal data. They can take their data out from Google cloud if they wish not to use its services anymore.
• Access Transparency: When GCP support personnel or system engineers engage with your data, Access Transparency produces near-real time logs. Similarly, Access Approval, which is still in testing, allows customers to actively authorize or deny Google administrators access to stored data or configurations.
• Serverless solutions by Google Cloud: Serverless solutions from the Google Cloud Platform cover a wide range of topics, including app development, analytics, workflow design, and much more. It also has an integration with Elastic Cloud to support open-source search and analytics.

Who does the Google Cloud Platform affect?

Google initially targeted cloud services for startups, and small & medium-sized businesses, giving them up to $100,000 of Cloud Platform and Firebase credits. Nevertheless, due to low adoption, Google decided to make GCP more customizable to a variety of use cases. Subsequently, Google added more utilities to the Cloud Platform to facilitate the transition, making the platform more accessible to enterprises.

In 2016, Google added big names to its Cloud Platform portfolio, including Disney, Coca-Cola, Spotify, Apple, and Home Depot, showing that it can fulfill the needs of major market players. Also, Twitter announced its adoption of Google Cloud Platform in 2018, transferring 300 petabytes of data to the cloud. By the end of this year, Google's portfolio of high-profile Cloud clients will be much too long to discuss individually.

Google Cloud products will have an influence on any firm that has ambitions for large-scale data analytics, AI or ML development, remote collaboration, or one of the numerous X-as-a-Service products accessible in the cloud in the coming years.

How can cloud developers use GCP?

Since GCP is a platform for building and hosting apps, the choice of a cloud provider does have an impact on a professional cloud developer. Google Cloud Platform supports Go, Node.js, Python, Ruby, PHP,.NET, and Java languages for developers. Developers should be included in any discussion about selecting a cloud provider to ensure that it is a platform that they, and their team, are comfortable working on.

The bigger challenge is two-fold: identifying whether or not, the platform is the right fit for your company. When an organization begins to plan its deployment, it should make a list of questions firstly regarding the services they want and cross-reference them with the FAQ section on the Google Cloud Platform website. Make sure everyone is familiarized with the documentation before diving into the mechanics of a GCP deployment.

Google Cloud Platform offers a free tier, as well as a free 12-month trial with credit for enterprises. With Google Cloud for startups initiative, Google provides free credits to the selected startups working with affiliated investors, incubators, or accelerators.

Google Cloud Platform Components

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers several tools, services and components. Let us dive into each one individually and learn more about what they offer to the developers!

Compute

The Google cloud compute service enables compute and hosting the cloud. It offers various services listed as follows:

• App Engine: Using App Engine, we can increase our productivity wherein we can use built-in services to develop our apps. The features of App Engine include: scale deployment, many storage options, known development tools, and popular frameworks.
• Compute Engine: We can use Google's architecture and select a virtual computer as per the requirements to cater workloads on a large scale. We need to pay only for what we use since the billing is per minute. The features of the google compute engine include: security and compliance, cloud load balancing, and high-performance virtual computers.
• Google Kubernetes Engine: Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) provides a managed environment for deploying, managing, and scaling your containerized applications using Google infrastructure.
• Google Cloud Functions: Using cloud functions, we can run our code in the cloud without the need for servers at scale. New customers are provided with $300 free credits to spend on cloud functions. The key features include: simplified developer experience, pay only for what you use, and increased developer velocity.
• Cloud Run: We can build, deploy, and scale apps written in any language (including Go, Python, Java, Node.js, .NET, and Ruby) on a fully managed platform using Cloud Run.

Storage and Database

Using storage and database services (like Cloud SQL), we can store media files, backups, and other files (like object format). The services include:

• Cloud Storage
• Cloud SQL 
• Cloud Bigtable 
• Cloud Spanner 
• Cloud Datastore

Networking

Using networking services, we can load-balance the traffic across the resources, create DNS records, and much more. The services it offers, include:

• VPC 
• Cloud Load Balancing 
• Cloud Armor 
• Cloud CDN 
• Cloud Interconnect 
• Cloud DNS 
• Network Service Tiers

Big Data

As the name suggests, the big data service enables developers to process and query big data in the cloud. The services include:

• BigQuery 
• Cloud Dataproc
• Cloud Datalab 
• Cloud Data Studio

Developer Tools

Developer tools like Cloud SDK, Cloud Code, CloudBuild, Cloud Tasks, and Cloud Scheduler enable developers to develop applications and software on the Google Cloud Platform.

Identity and Security

This service deals with security and authentication:

• Cloud Identity 
• Cloud IAM 
• Cloud Data Loss Prevention API
• Security Key Enforcement

Internet of Things (IoT)

GCP offers some tools to create IoT environments like Cloud IoT Core, Edge TPU, and Cloud IoT.

Cloud AI

Cloud AI consists of all those services which are related to machine learning which are as follows:

• Cloud AutoML 
• Cloud Natural Language 
• Cloud Speech-to-Text 
• Cloud Text-to-Speech 
• Cloud Translation API
• Cloud Vision API 
• Cloud Video Intelligence

Management Tools

GCP offers some management tools & managed services like Cloud Deployment Manager, Cloud Console, Cloud Shell, and Cloud APIs which help in management and monitoring.

API Platform

It includes services like Maps Platform, Developer Portal, API Analytics, Apigee Sense, and Cloud Endpoints.

How does Google Cloud Platform work?

Nowadays, with cloud computing, both software and hardware products can co-exist remotely (in data centers). These products can be leveraged to provide certain services to the users. Users can easily access, manage, and use the tools which they require using a web-interface, which is also applicable to the Google Cloud Platform services.

Users can create a "project" using the simple, web-based GCP Console once they have selected the Google Cloud services on GCP that will benefit them. Even better, the project managers can control which team members or administrators have access to particular services.

Let us understand the working in detail by discussing about the Google cloud storage service of GCP! Cloud storage saves data such as files, business data, pictures, or videos on remote servers. Users use an internet connection to upload data to servers, where it is saved on a virtual computer on a physical server. To ensure availability and provide redundancy in case of any server failure, cloud companies distribute data over numerous virtual machines in data centers situated across the world. If storage requirements grow, the cloud provider will create new virtual computers to accommodate the load. Users can access data in Cloud Storage through an internet connection and software such as web portal, browser, or mobile app via an application programming interface (API).

How can you specialize in GCP as a developer? (Certifications)

There are certain GCP certifications that can help developers work more efficiently, and also boost their careers by enhancing their technical expertise. There are majorly three certification tracks of GCP:

Associate certifications:

This particular track is intended for a budding cloud developer and cloud novices to get started with the Google Cloud Platform technology. With this certification track, a cloud developer can always look out for new opportunities and new professional-level certifications.

Professional certifications:

The tracks for Professional certifications include: data engineering, cloud architecture, professional cloud developer, network engineering, and beyond. These certifications are for those who have been in the industry for a few years and now, want to consider hands-on Google Cloud Platform courses. On the basis of the Job (role), a cloud developer can gain advanced design skills and implementation skills.

Google workspace certifications:

Google Cloud Platform's reach is expanded with this track for anyone who is learning or uses Google Workspace. Project managers and executive assistants, for example, who need to use the core Google Workspace tools and services regularly, would benefit from this Google Cloud Platform certification.

Google Cloud Platform pricing

Google claims no up-front expenses, pay-as-you-go services, and no cancellation fees. Furthermore, Google provides pricing savings and innovations such as rightsizing. Consumers may also use their website's price calculator. Customers can use this tool to estimate expenses.

Meanwhile, a total cost of ownership (TCO) calculator is available to assist users in comparing the expenses of Google Cloud Platform vs AWS. Price varies per service, so you'll want to browse throughout the platform at each offering and compare rates accordingly.

GCP vs Microsoft Azure vs AWS

Because Google Cloud Platform provides so many distinct services, you want to be sure you're not comparing apples to oranges when comparing popular services like Google Cloud Platform vs Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform vs AWS. Each firm has distinct goals, and the size and rate of growth of your organization will have a significant influence on your IT demands and budget.

While all of these platforms provide amazing features, it is critical to examine your company's needs before choosing one. The correct cloud services supplier assists you in meeting your business objectives while costing less.

Future of GCP

Google's approach and overall strategy appear to be oriented towards the future rather than the internet as it now exists. Google appears to have bet on the globe, eventually having low-cost internet connectivity. It could involve globally available super-fast mobile broadband as well as optical fiber connections installed in homes and workplaces. Google anticipates that by the time it has refined its app stack, broadband will be available globally. It is essential since Google's apps rely totally on an internet connection and the majority of data is saved on Google's cloud servers.

Yet, Google's predictions for the future of broadband may be incorrect. In many regions, introducing high-speed internet connection based exclusively on free-market forces is not financially viable. This might be true for a very long period. More competition in larger markets and stronger private-public collaborations in smaller ones will be required for Google's goal to be achieved.