One of the points in the op-ed article we're discussing was the opportunity in this market, which makes it worth investing in. If you're still not convinced, I'd encourage you to read this interview [1] with Google's SVP of Technical Infrastructure, where he spells out a shift in the way Google develops to spend a majority of it's efforts in the cloud world.

> “It has become clear that the public cloud is the way of the future,” Hölzle says during an interview at Google headquarters. [..] “One day, this could be bigger than ads. Certainly, in terms of market potential, it is.”

If you still don't believe, Google Cloud Platform has a published deprecation policy in its Terms of Service, which is very similar to that of other major providers. In short, you get one full year's advance notice of the deprecation of any supported service.

[1] http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/03/urs-google-stor...

One year deprecation is not long enough for anything enterprise. I wouldn't put anything in Google that can't be picked up and moved to another provider with minimal effort.

This is why I would never use Google for anything mission critical. You can't trust them to keep anything going.