The bigger subject here is that Google is taking on a government contract as a power flex not as a real growth opportunity. It's 1.2B usd contract shared with Amazon so it's 600M right? - that's like 3 days of adsense revenue (or 1 EU fine lol)
Google is not doing this as a direct business opportunity but as a market flex or some ideological goal. I think it's fair that it's being responded in ideological sense as well.
Probably yeah - in high corporate sense. Googlers however still think Google is different. Sundar Pichai thinks Google is different. The amount of self delusion is quite incredible when in reality it's just another giant souless corporation with self interest.
They are trying to grab any business. I work with many companies and I’ve yet to see any actively using gcp. I know a few planning to move data there but Google is throwing a ton of resources at them.