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.
![](/assets/ieee_ompi/no-credit-card.png)
Creating an Account
(1). Go to https://cloud.google.com/ to open an account
![](/assets/ieee_ompi/GCP-login-page.png)
(2). Fill in the necessary identity, address and credit card details.
(3). After account creation, we’re presented with the Welcome to GCP page.
![](/assets/ieee_ompi/welcome-to-GCP.png)
(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.
![](/assets/ieee_ompi/GCP-dashboard.png)
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.