I've got to say that I've found Google's swirling messaging around serverless-as-a-service to be frustrating. Originally, it was App Engine, which was great: upload a bit of Java/Python and off you went.

Then that suddenly seemed to get expensive (https://readwrite.com/2011/09/02/google-app-engine-pricing-a...).

Then, about 3 years ago, App Engine seemed to be Docker-only App Engine ("Using the App Engine flexible environment means that your application instances run within Docker containers on Google Compute Engine virtual machines") with little mention of the original upload-some-code App Engine.

Now there are the App Engine "Standard Environment" which is in "Beta" and the "Flexible Environment" which is GA.

Now it's old-is-new, upload-some-code App Engine by a different name. I think it would have been much more clear if, having to maintain legacy App Engine code+environments, they had released Google App Engine V2 and called "Flexible Environment" the "Container Environment" (but that would have been confusing with "Kubernetes Engine"...).

GCP's messaging seemed to have been much more coherent than AWS's but they seem to be catching up. What's next? A Lightsail competitor?