That's fair. Although there are pretty tight internal controls on what Google can do on your Cloud Shell, you have to put a certain level of trust into Google

That's fair. Although there are pretty tight internal controls on what Google can do on your Cloud Shell, you have to put a certain level of trust into Google here. Getting your own GCE VM and using SSH-in-the-browser is arguably more secure. Last I checked an f1-micro VM would suffice and fits under the 'always free' GCE cap.