The plan to move to Google Cloud was in motion for many months, way before talks about a potential GitHub acquisition started.

They adopted Kubernetes relatively early, and as they progressed their reliance on Azure-specific services went down. At that point move to another cloud was a purely financial decision.

The move to k8s was not strictly a means to allow cloud migration. GitLab sells their Enteprise product, and the Kubernetes-based deployment helps customers with product trial and adoption. Cloud migration is a welcomed side-effect of that initiative.

> At that point move to another cloud was a purely financial decision.

And this is the promise of k8s for companies (and the peril of k8s for cloud providers).

I'd wager they got some kind of discount or exclusive pricing as well? Big ticket companies (which Gitlab could arguably be called in the tech world) moving to a cloud platform could generate a fair bit of buzz and free marketing?

It'll look good for GCP if, after the move, GitLab no longer has frequent stability issues, regardless of level of cause-effect.

Microsoft isn't known for playing fair, so it seems smart to reduce the risk by migrating elsewhere.

What do you mean? Has MS screwed people on Azure pricing? I’m confused about what you’re saying and how it relates to Azure and GitLab.

Microsoft have a very long, very well documented history of anti-social behaviour. :)

For just one tip of that iceberg, this Wikipedia article seems like a good place to start:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation