Creating an account on GCP
A GCP account gives access to all of the platform’s infrastructure and services. For a new account, trial credits is awarded to be spent over a period of 12 months. This offer allows one to explore the different features and services of Google’s cloud offering.
To register an account requires a valid credit card to validate that it is an authentic user, as opposed to a robot. However, the credit card won’t be charged after the trial ends, except Google is authorized to do so.
Creating an Account
(1). Go to https://cloud.google.com/ to open an account
(2). Fill in the necessary identity, address and credit card details.
(3). After account creation, we’re presented with the Welcome to GCP page.
(4). Click on the triple-dash in the top-right corner of the page (1), then click on Home (2) to open the Google Cloud Platform Dashboard.
The Cloud Dashboard provides a birds-eye summary of the project such as the current billing rate and other resource usage statistics. The activity tab to the right gives a breakdown of the resource actions performed on the account. This feature is useful when building an audit trail of events.