| AWS | Google Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Maintainer | Amazon Web Services | |
| First release | 2006 | 2008 |
| License | proprietary | proprietary |
| Learning curve | Steep. More than 200 services and the IAM permission model take real time to learn; certifications exist for a reason. | The gentlest console and cleanest project model of the big three; there are simply fewer services to learn. |
| Performance | The largest global footprint of regions and availability zones, with the most mature managed services and SLAs in the industry. | Excellent global network and best-in-class data and AI services; third in market share behind AWS and Azure. |
AWS wins on catalog breadth, ecosystem and hiring; Google Cloud wins on data analytics (BigQuery), managed Kubernetes (GKE) and a cleaner developer experience. Data-intensive and Kubernetes-first companies genuinely do better on GCP; for everything else, AWS's maturity and community make it the lower-risk default.