You might want to take a look at our talk from Google I/O about the new runtime https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogexnfng_hE&t=515s https://www.youtube.com/watc

You might want to take a look at our talk from Google I/O about the new runtime https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogexnfng_hE&t=515s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogexnfng_hE&t=515s The new runtime is 100% idiomatic without any special apis. We do offer certain native libraries pre compiled system libraries (to support headless chrome among other things) and certain ENV Variables for gcp API tokens. You should be able to lift and shift a GAE Standard Node.js app to any other provider with minimal overhead. I can't make direct promises regarding the runtime update cadence, but I can promise that I work closely with the people responsible for this and they care a lot about getting updates out in a timely fashion. The new runtime stack makes this easier to do than previous GAE Standard runtimes. (Disclaimer: I work for GCP)