If you didn't watch the recent Google Cloud Live presentation, you missed out twice. First, you missed learning about some awesome price reductions as well as some cool features; and second, you missed a possible $500 credit for signing up to watch it!
(Though if you did, kudos, I hope you put that credit to good use!)
So anyway, if this credit goes through, I might spin up a VM and give this whole thing a shot again once the price reduction is confirmed ...
Edit: The credit expires in July :(
Edit: Amazon actually has a free tier which effectively amounts to the same thing