I think he edited his post so your $9/mo math no longer references anything he said. But I think the issue is: making the commitment to use Spanner will take m

I think he edited his post so your $9/mo math no longer references anything he said. But I think the issue is: making the commitment to use Spanner will take more than 2 weeks ($300 in credit) to determine if it's worth using. Why not setup a "shared Spanner" with millions of pre-populated rows, and let free accounts have unlimited read-only access to it? That would let people fiddle with the technology before sweating bullets during the 2 week trial. (5 day trial if you run the recommended 3 node minimum)