Everyone's needs are different. To me GCP is easier to get started with.
I don't want white glove service where they try to architect my architecture for me. Pushing me into cloud specific features (like everything in Lambdas stitched together with API Gateways). I don't need that level of help.
Also, of the three startups where I have heavily used AWS (personally "owned" the AWS infra), I never had that level of service offered. The only time I've had that "we'll help you architect it" service from AWS was at a startup that used GCP, and there were high level (CEO and CTO) discussions with AWS about partnerships. Then AWS wanted to help us architect (with Lambdas and API Gateways).
For me, GCP is way easier. Their products are more complete products. They work together out of the box. They are optimized for the 90% use case to just work. It is far easier to get a really good complete architecture working with GCP. Using their products push you to industry standard ways of writing and packaging applications (12-factor, Docker containers, etc.).
The startups I've seen build on AWS often have very bad setups. Hand rolled and poorly managed EC2 messes. Bad logging and monitoring because AWS doesn't have good logging and monitoring. Having to manage everything themselves because AWS doesn't/didn't have good managed platforms (Elastic Beanstalk has enough problems that people don't use it, and EKS barely counts as a managed service).
I've seen multiple startup with hand configured EC2 instances, running some generic web service. These systems create huge burdens and risks as the company grows. The app then grows and becomes locked into the special snowflake hand configured mess. One company I joined couldn't deploy for 6 months because their last deployment (a manual process) took 7 hours of downtime. When I see those systems I wish they started on Heroku or GCP App Engine (2nd gen). They would be way better off with a fully automated platform and 12-factor apps. Once you grow and hire people with infrastructure expertise you can take that clean 12-factor app and move it somewhere else. Non-experts trying to use AWS results in scary things.
GCP gives you that easy on-ramp. You can start with App Engine. If you need something a bit more custom, you can use Cloud Run (same basic tech as App Engine v2 but with Docker containers). If you need to move to something even more customizable for growing special needs, you can use GKE for a fully managed Kubernetes. With all those services you can write normal apps that use environment variables and log to stdout/stderr. All three give you logs in an easy to use logging platform. All three give you metrics in an easy to use monitoring/metrics/dashboard platform.
At every level GCP is easier. Cloud Pub/Sub is easier than SNS+SQS, Amazon Kinesis, or Amazon MSK (Kafka). It is multi-region and just works and scales. GCP VPCs and networking are easier because GCP VPCs are global (not regional), and subnets are regional (not zonal). No need to stitch VPCs together. GCP even has Shared VPCs so you can have a single address space shared across multiple projects (GCP projects == AW accounts). GCP authentication is simple and sane, even across multiple projects, no federation and role assumption needed. GCP IAM is far easier than AWS IAM. Cloud Datastore provides a really simple yet powerful NoSQL store, totally simple, no tunables, just works and scales, and even has some multi-region options available. Want a multi-region consistent database that spans large geographic regions? Amazon doesn't have an option, GCP has Spanner. Want a multi-region consistent blob/file store? Amazon doesn't have an option (S3 is single region), GCP offers GCS in multi-region, dual-region options that provide consistent multi-region file storage. Do you have some weird old app that writes to disk, and you would like it to be able to survive a zone failure? AWS EBS is single zone, GCP persistent disks can be regional, and because subnets are regional that means an instance in another zone can take over the disk and the IP.
For me, GCP is way easier to get started with. And will result in a better system in the medium term. In the long term, when you have thousands of engineers and experts in infrastructure engineering, it probably doesn't matter.
I don't want white glove service where they try to architect my architecture for me. Pushing me into cloud specific features (like everything in Lambdas stitched together with API Gateways). I don't need that level of help.
Also, of the three startups where I have heavily used AWS (personally "owned" the AWS infra), I never had that level of service offered. The only time I've had that "we'll help you architect it" service from AWS was at a startup that used GCP, and there were high level (CEO and CTO) discussions with AWS about partnerships. Then AWS wanted to help us architect (with Lambdas and API Gateways).
For me, GCP is way easier. Their products are more complete products. They work together out of the box. They are optimized for the 90% use case to just work. It is far easier to get a really good complete architecture working with GCP. Using their products push you to industry standard ways of writing and packaging applications (12-factor, Docker containers, etc.).
The startups I've seen build on AWS often have very bad setups. Hand rolled and poorly managed EC2 messes. Bad logging and monitoring because AWS doesn't have good logging and monitoring. Having to manage everything themselves because AWS doesn't/didn't have good managed platforms (Elastic Beanstalk has enough problems that people don't use it, and EKS barely counts as a managed service).
I've seen multiple startup with hand configured EC2 instances, running some generic web service. These systems create huge burdens and risks as the company grows. The app then grows and becomes locked into the special snowflake hand configured mess. One company I joined couldn't deploy for 6 months because their last deployment (a manual process) took 7 hours of downtime. When I see those systems I wish they started on Heroku or GCP App Engine (2nd gen). They would be way better off with a fully automated platform and 12-factor apps. Once you grow and hire people with infrastructure expertise you can take that clean 12-factor app and move it somewhere else. Non-experts trying to use AWS results in scary things.
GCP gives you that easy on-ramp. You can start with App Engine. If you need something a bit more custom, you can use Cloud Run (same basic tech as App Engine v2 but with Docker containers). If you need to move to something even more customizable for growing special needs, you can use GKE for a fully managed Kubernetes. With all those services you can write normal apps that use environment variables and log to stdout/stderr. All three give you logs in an easy to use logging platform. All three give you metrics in an easy to use monitoring/metrics/dashboard platform.
At every level GCP is easier. Cloud Pub/Sub is easier than SNS+SQS, Amazon Kinesis, or Amazon MSK (Kafka). It is multi-region and just works and scales. GCP VPCs and networking are easier because GCP VPCs are global (not regional), and subnets are regional (not zonal). No need to stitch VPCs together. GCP even has Shared VPCs so you can have a single address space shared across multiple projects (GCP projects == AW accounts). GCP authentication is simple and sane, even across multiple projects, no federation and role assumption needed. GCP IAM is far easier than AWS IAM. Cloud Datastore provides a really simple yet powerful NoSQL store, totally simple, no tunables, just works and scales, and even has some multi-region options available. Want a multi-region consistent database that spans large geographic regions? Amazon doesn't have an option, GCP has Spanner. Want a multi-region consistent blob/file store? Amazon doesn't have an option (S3 is single region), GCP offers GCS in multi-region, dual-region options that provide consistent multi-region file storage. Do you have some weird old app that writes to disk, and you would like it to be able to survive a zone failure? AWS EBS is single zone, GCP persistent disks can be regional, and because subnets are regional that means an instance in another zone can take over the disk and the IP.
For me, GCP is way easier to get started with. And will result in a better system in the medium term. In the long term, when you have thousands of engineers and experts in infrastructure engineering, it probably doesn't matter.