I am attempting to create a Google Could Platform storage bucket instead of setting up FTP on this VM.

Later: I was able to create the bucket, and I can move files from that bucket to this website, but I can't seem to copy them the other way.

Google's "little" VMs, one of which I'm seemingly getting for free, at least for a year, can be run pretty much like any Debian Linux system. That's great if you're a Debian expert, not so great if you're not.

Luckily I know how to get around in Debian, and like pretty much everybody I can search (or "Google" if you will) for everything else.

One thing I can say is that the Google Cloud Platform virtual terminal, which opens in a web window, is very usable.

Much cloud pricing is complicated (barring those like Digital Ocean, which spell out what's going to cost you per month), but it appears that Google is giving us one "micro"-VM for free with no time limit as part of the "Google Platform Free Tier":

• 1 f1-micro instance per month (US regions us-central1, us-east1 and us-west1 only)
• 30 GB-months HDD
• 5 GB-months snapshot in select regions
• 1 GB network egress from North America to all region destinations per month (excluding China and Australia)

Somehow I either had to sign up for a credit. You can get a free shell without signing up, but to get the actual VM, you need to fork over a credit card number and "accept" the credit over one year. I'm not sure if/when/how I'll be charged, but I will definitely be keeping my eye on that.

My sites definitely consume more than 1 GB per month: In March 2019, http://stevenrosenberg.net used 4.69 GB, and http://updates.stevenrosenberg.net used 216 MB.

This is a compelling use case for Digital Ocean because that service offers VMs with 1 TB of bandwidth, which is 1000+ times what Google is offering for "free." The predictable, consistent yet low pricing is very attractive.

Still, there's something to be said for /home/public//cgi-bin/ode.cgi, and if I keep an eye on the bandwidth and charges, I'll see what kind of value proposition the Google Cloud Platform offers for smaller users.