So this has been on my backlog for a while, let's get rid of it. @rseroter wrote an analysis of the various provider offerings' Cloud Shells. I haven't actually read it yet, but let's tear into it. https://seroter.com/2021/02/03/lets-compare-the-cloud-shells-offered-by-aws-microsoft-azure-and-google-cloud-platform/

Let's start by disclaiming two biases.
1) @rseroter directs "Outbound Product Management" at GCP, so he's not exactly objective.
2) AWS's Cloud Shell came out 5 years and 2 months after GCPs, so if it's not "blow the doors off" better, then it failed.

He starts with @gcpcloud's Cloud Shell. I like how it's part of the same view, not a separate window. And you get 5GB of persistent storage to AWS's 1GB. Hmm.

Okay that's nifty. I can do horrible things with this.

A bunch of customizable options. Someone way overthought this.

Next up we have @azure's entrant. 5GB of storage as well, bash and powershell both supported. It also lives in a frame.

Richard's evaluation is as follows; I think it's quite fair.

20% of the storage, opens in a new tab, only available in some regions. Hmm. But it does have zsh!

AWS clearly listened to customers who were unfortunately on mute, and implemented CodeCommit support, for which no one asked.

And @rseroter summarizes as follows. Um.

I... kinda have some thoughts here.

I understand and appreciate that like it or not, @rseroter speaks for @gcpcloud, and he has to bear that in mind with respect to everything he writes.

I do not. So I will now give my feedback.

We'll dismiss @azure's entrant out of hand. It's fine, it's been around for a while, and things in Azure have always seemed "slightly weird," so they'll get a pass.

GCP's Cloud Shell sets the gold standard here, and it's been around for ages.

Whereas AWS's... I'm sorry, you had five years to build a cloud shell offering, during which time you were besieged with CONSTANT customer requests for it, and you could have built something transformative. Instead we have... this.

20% the storage, data doesn't replicate between regions, you can't have it in a frame so you can type while looking at the console, you spell it without a space, and it feels like you're terrified people might get something however small for free at some point.

Honestly it's like someone didn't revert my April Fool's Day prank of swapping a few of the Leadership Principles with the Seven Deadly Sins and this team just kinda ran with it for a few years.

No IDE support, there's nothing in the console of the form "paste this string into the Cloud Shell" so it may as well not be taking up the screen real estate, and I'm just at a loss.

Ask me which of these products was brand new vs 5 years old and I'd have lost big.

I periodically say that of the big three, @gcpcloud's developer experience is far ahead. This is a great example of what I mean when I say that.

I mean, don't get me wrong; dunking on all of the clouds is my stock-in trade, and I *want* to crap on GCP's implementation. I just can't when its only real competition is... this.

So in conclusion:

Google Cloud Shell: A
Azure Cloud Shell: Pass (we go pass/fail on this)
AWS CloudShell: Please see me after class.