There was one guy who actually seriously suggested Google offering. Idea got dropped as EVERY other person in discussion said NO. Azure it will be. Over life of that project I am guessing google lost something like 1-2mil USD minimum. Obviously chump change by their standard but still.
Main reasoning for me was always the absolutely atrocious customer support, no fucking way in hell I will ever give 1c to them if I can avoid it.
This is the key. Google has my "business," but I'm also sick of it. The moment there's a really valid competitor - and these days, I'm starting to look at protonmail - I'm gone. The same stickiness that kept me with them will keep me gone.
I really don't think I'm alone in that.
Google fairly obviously is not doing that.
What sort of blowback do conglomerates see for this? Do railroad executives balk at buying GE locomotives because their GE refrigerators fail?
Some companies have to care what developers think. (Few, to be frank; developers overestimate their importance.) Many companies have to care what "influencers" think.
But not all, and Google is not part of that "most". Google doesn't have to give a shit because everyone uses Google. They are literally market-saturated at this point. They have no competition and the only material threat in the medium run is a powerful country with a salty antitrust division.
And on your other point, the idea that a company like Google should care about the rounding error of people who care about some B2C thing like Reader shutting down (while many totally-fine alternatives exist) being so personally put out that that colors their analysis of B2B offerings is more than a little silly. If you decide on GCP based frustrations over Google Reader or Google Inbox, you probably aren't clear-headed enough to be making decisions for your company and it's probably a good thing that you are a rounding error besides.
(I use some Google services; I don't use GCP for a variety of reasons completely unrelated to babyraging over a B2C shutdown.)