Is Google Cloud (GCP) actually the best for ML right now? An honest take.

I’ve been testing the waters with GCP’s ML stack recently (Vertex AI, BigQuery ML, Gemini), and I’m torn.

The Wins:

• BigQuery ML: Running models directly via SQL without moving data is honestly a game-changer for rapid prototyping.
• Vertex AI: It finally feels unified. Moving from a notebook to a deployed endpoint is way smoother than the SageMaker maze.
• TPUs: If you can get quota, the training speed/cost ratio beats GPUs hands down.

The Gotchas:

• The "Zombie Endpoint" Tax: Forget to delete a deployed endpoint? Say goodbye to your wallet. It charges even with zero traffic.
• Documentation: Half the guides still reference the legacy "AI Platform." It’s a mess.

For those in production, is the Developer Experience on Vertex AI worth the premium over AWS/Azure? Or are you sticking to the other giants?