According to TheRegister.com, Andrew Ayer, founder of SSL certificate service SSLMate, has experienced three separate Google Cloud account suspensions since May 2024, with the most recent happening just last Friday. The suspensions occurred despite Ayer following Google’s own documentation for setting up secure customer integrations using service accounts. Each suspension came with different stated reasons – from policy violations to terms of service breaches – and Google never provided clear explanations or prevention guidance. Incredibly, one customer’s integration continued working through all suspensions while others failed, highlighting the arbitrary nature of Google’s enforcement. After the third suspension and subsequent automated permanent ban notice, Ayer concluded he “cannot rely on having a Google account for production use cases” and is now planning to ditch Google Cloud entirely.
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The real problem here
This isn’t just about one company’s bad experience. It’s about whether any business can trust cloud providers with critical infrastructure. And honestly, Google’s track record here is getting pretty concerning. We’ve seen similar stories before – businesses getting locked out of their Google Workspace accounts, AdSense accounts suspended without explanation, now cloud infrastructure getting the same treatment.
Here’s the thing: when you’re running production systems, reliability isn’t just about uptime percentages. It’s about having predictable, transparent processes. Google seems to be failing spectacularly at the transparency part. Ayer followed their own documentation, built a system that actually enhanced security by eliminating long-lived credentials, and got punished for it. Three times.
What this means for the cloud market
This kind of incident creates real competitive opportunities for AWS and Azure. Both have their own issues, but they haven’t developed quite the same reputation for arbitrary account suspensions. When businesses are choosing cloud providers for mission-critical workloads, stories like this absolutely influence decisions.
I’m seeing more companies adopting multi-cloud strategies specifically to avoid this single point of failure. They’ll use Google for some non-critical workloads, but keep their core systems elsewhere. That’s basically what Ayer was already doing with Google Cloud – using it mostly for customer integrations rather than running his entire service. But even that limited exposure proved too risky.
The security irony
What’s particularly frustrating here is that Ayer was actually implementing better security practices. He was using service accounts and avoiding long-lived credentials – exactly what security experts have been recommending for years. Google’s own documentation encourages this approach, yet their automated systems keep flagging it as suspicious.
So we’ve got this weird situation where following security best practices might actually get your account suspended. That creates perverse incentives – companies might stick with less secure methods just to avoid triggering Google’s opaque enforcement algorithms. How does that make any sense?
Where do we go from here?
Ayer’s detailed blog post outlines potential technical solutions using OpenID Connect, but he notes Google has made even that unnecessarily complicated. The fundamental issue remains: you can’t build reliable systems on unreliable foundations.
This feels like a wake-up call for the entire cloud industry. As more businesses move critical operations to the cloud, providers need to offer more than just technical reliability. They need process reliability – clear policies, transparent enforcement, and human support when things go wrong. Right now, Google seems to be treating cloud customers the same way they treat free Gmail users, and that’s just not going to work for businesses running production systems.
