Spanner is great for Google, and other companies at the scale of Google. For the other 99% of companies, it's way too expensive, with too much lock-in (even SQL

Spanner is great for Google, and other companies at the scale of Google. For the other 99% of companies, it's way too expensive, with too much lock-in (even SQL-based DML is a new addition), and has too many limitations. There are dozens of managed database vendors now along with self-service deployments like Kubernetes operators that can scale standard databases as far as you need.