But...?
OK - cloud service are not my area of expertise, so downvote at your leisure but....
If a company is buying goods or services which are critical to the operation then surely it reads the contract and makes sure its fit for purpose at all levels; price, spec, maintenance, support, edge cases, etc. I bet Google didn't do anything that wasn't in the contract.
As an example - we once had to get dual, diverse data lines from BT. They were safety related and it was important that they didn't come together anywhere other than at each end and therefore be as immune as reasonably possible to the man-with-a-digger single point failure.
We gave BT a spec. and we got a proposal and contract from BT. Engineering read it, the lawyers read it, the safety consultant read and we all agreed that it was OK. Then, to make sure, we had a meeting with BT to be absolutely sure they understood what this meant. They hadn't. They did after we explained it and they upped the price a bit - but we were happy.
I'm guessing that one of the problems with some cloud services is that the contract is pretty one-sided and not for negotiation, but in that case - if it doesn't meet *all* the requirements - you walk away and present the boss with a cost/benefit comparison of cloud vs self hosting, don't you?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
