[prirun]

I shut down my Google Cloud Billing account a couple of days ago. I only used it for HashBackup testing, and only to test Google Cloud Storage specifically, but there are too many recurring stories about crazy charges at all storage providers, and since trying to actually speak to the Great and Powerful Google is impossible, I just decided to close it. I was a bit anxious about doing anything with it because I didn't want it to screw up my Gmail account, but having moved that to Fastmail a few months ago, Gmail isn't such a risk now.

I did check into their Budget screens, but holy cow - there are 1900 services there! And besides, setting a budget doesn't help if someone breaks in while I'm sleeping, racks up $10's of thousands of dollars of charges, and I get a notice the next day. So I never did that.

Canceling the billing account lets me sleep at night. And if I absolutely, positively have to get back on, it looked fairly simple to reactivate the billing account.