"Nobody got fired for picking AWS" is still true. But for mid-market businesses without a platform team of 20, the boring choice isn't always the right one.
We're a Google Cloud Partner, so the bias is on the label. That said, here's how we actually frame the decision in client conversations — including when we recommend against GCP.
Pick GCP when
- Your team is small. GCP's defaults are more sensible out of the box. You spend less time on undifferentiated cloud admin.
- You're data-heavy. BigQuery is in a different league for ad-hoc analytical workloads at mid-market scale.
- You're using Google Workspace. IAM and SSO are one less integration to babysit.
- You want managed AI without DIY plumbing. Vertex AI + Gemini integration is smoother than the equivalent path on AWS for most practical workflows.
Stick with AWS when
- You already have years of CloudFormation, ops runbooks, and team knowledge invested.
- You need specific services with no real GCP equivalent (some niche ML/HPC, some regional compliance regimes).
- You're hiring senior cloud engineers — the AWS talent pool is still deeper.
The decision in one sentence
If you're starting from a relatively clean slate and your team is under ten engineers, GCP will usually get you to production faster and cost less to run. If you have meaningful AWS lock-in, the migration arithmetic almost never pencils out.
We help clients on both sides of this line. The wrong answer is letting "because Amazon" decide for you.