As you know, I've had to deal with a lot of these and certainly S3 is the easiest because GCS roughly supports the S3 XML API (we do resumable uploads different

As you know, I've had to deal with a lot of these and certainly S3 is the easiest because GCS roughly supports the S3 XML API (we do resumable uploads differently). The sad thing is that even when you say "oh just rewrite this piece to be Datastore or BigTable instead of Dynamo" that can be a pretty tall order. I think "pretty easy" depends on the organization, and how tied to a single provider it was in the first place. That said, I think it's a mistake to "avoid lock-in" religiously, because otherwise you're really getting a lowest common denominator experience. You really should use BigQuery if you're on GCP, and if you need to leave it might be tough. But the alternative is worse (using an inferior service or hand-rolled system from the get go). P.S. As we're both in the same region of California, we're both with PG&E and can't do anything about it. It's kind of okay because they're so regulated, but how do you know we're getting a good price per kWh? Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud (and met jedberg in person once).