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Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

tomshardware.com

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Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#31

Post by torvoborvo »

ReptileMan wrote: post #21
dpoloncsak wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the last person to defend Google Cloud and it's awful UX. With that said, when you go to set a budget it warns you "Setting a budget does not cap resource or API consumption. Learn more." with a hyperlink to https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/budgets?_g...

I am fairly sure that this is antipattern on purpose. If you ask a thousand people on the street what a budget means - they will coalesce on - the money I am willing to spend on something. The fact that google redefine what budget means and put a warning doesn't make it ok.

Even if US clouds will make more money per capita in the US it has more total income and political advantage from the other 95% of people. US law will be as pro-consumer as Delaware law. (And it will be as restricted to the jurisdiction that decides it as IP law.)

Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#32

Post by cma »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #8
perryizgr8 wrote: post #5

I think I read somewhere that calculating and limiting cloud usage costs is a really hard problem. But I feel that if Google were motivated to do it, they can do it. It's hard, not impossible. They just don't care to solve this particular problem.

It's the same fundamental problem as view counters, something Google is famously good at solving. Eventually consistent solutions are well-understood, and wouldn't have these kinds of massive cost-overruns.

It's more a problem they are incentivized to have. Open Router allows fixed wallets and doesn't run into the same problem, since it would be their money on the line if they let a user overspend their limits.

Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#33

Post by pradn »

victor106 wrote: post #11

Why doesn’t GCP provide a way to say “shut down all my services if my cap is reached”?

Suddenly turning off services when the billing cap is reached is a big reliability risk for customers. All workloads using that billing account would be impacted immediately.

If they weren't turned off at the billing cap, but were given some leeway instead, either that becomes the new hard limit, or GCP will have to give away the difference.

And there's no "middle ground" you could implement that makes sense either - like a "frozen" state. Preventing new writes to a GCS bucket breaks the writer app. Freezing VMs serving web traffic takes the site down.

Even if the service was shut down once the billing limit is hit, how long would GCP wait for the user to add funds or raise the limit? GCP would need to either keep the services in a hidden/frozen state or not turn them off / freeze them at all (in which case GCP would be giving away resources for free).

Maybe GCP can give users a heads-up when they're about to hit the limit? GCP already does - billing alerts do exist. It's just possible to blow past them if your usage is a massive spike.

Moreover, getting the hundreds of GCP services to implement a "frozen" state is difficult. It's hard enough getting everyone to listen to the "billing account disabled" signal, and (soft-)delete the resources (based on the resource, after some time interval). Given these billing overruns happen for smaller customers, it's not really worth solving the problem - which I don't think has a great solution to begin with.

Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#34

Post by cute_boi »

pradn wrote: post #33
victor106 wrote: post #11

Why doesn’t GCP provide a way to say “shut down all my services if my cap is reached”?

Suddenly turning off services when the billing cap is reached is a big reliability risk for customers. All workloads using that billing account would be impacted immediately. If they weren't turned off at the billing cap, but were given some leeway instead, either that becomes the new hard limit, or GCP will have to give away the difference. And there's no "middle ground" you could implement that makes sense either -…

Well they can give nuclear option and freeze everything. And they can send email every day till 7 days?

There is better option here, but google won't as it will hurt their incentive to take more money from customer.

Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#35

Post by symisc_devel »

We got a $12,000 bill a few hours ago on a presumably leaked gemini API which I very much doubt, and we are trying to resolve the issue with a real support agent. I think they messed something internally and customers are getting these bills.

Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#36

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

robotswantdata wrote: post #29

Do yourself a favour and automate unlinking the billing account. Set it to fire when your budget is hit or whatever your risk tolerance is. Yes nuclear option, but I’ll take an hour down time over a $100k unexpected bill

You still owe a debt, even with no card on file.

Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#37

Post by [deleted] »

dpoloncsak wrote: post #17
Telaneo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way I can read that is 'setting a cap does nothing' but reading that tells me that it only turns on email notifications. Not any better really. It's simply not a cap. It's an alarm.

Agreed. I don't agree with the underlying design decisions either, but you literally set a "Budget Alert" on Google Cloud. It's designed to be an alarm, not a cap. I was just trying to point that out

[deleted]

Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#38

Post by like_any_other »

pradn wrote: post #33
victor106 wrote: post #11

Why doesn’t GCP provide a way to say “shut down all my services if my cap is reached”?

Suddenly turning off services when the billing cap is reached is a big reliability risk for customers. All workloads using that billing account would be impacted immediately. If they weren't turned off at the billing cap, but were given some leeway instead, either that becomes the new hard limit, or GCP will have to give away the difference. And there's no "middle ground" you could implement that makes sense either -…

> Suddenly turning off services when the billing cap is reached is a big reliability risk for customers.

Those customers that would rather get a surprise $18,000 bill than have their servers stopped or data nuked, can simply not enable the spending limit.

Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#39

Post by gonzalohm »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #36
robotswantdata wrote: post #29

Do yourself a favour and automate unlinking the billing account. Set it to fire when your budget is hit or whatever your risk tolerance is. Yes nuclear option, but I’ll take an hour down time over a $100k unexpected bill

You still owe a debt, even with no card on file.

And Google owes honoring the budget limits no?

Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#40

Post by prirun »

I never got a surprise bill myself, but reading a few cases like this motivated me to cancel my GCS account and remove my CC. Now if I try to use it it fails immediately with an error.

As author of HashBackup, I know people are using it with GCS, and I'd like to be able to test against it, but not enough to swallow a large surprise Google bill.

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