I strongly prefer not to deal with Google in a business context. It's great when everything is running smoothly. But if things break down, there's usually not a damn thing you can do about it besides post to your blog and pray.

this is only true with google's free services. as far as i know, any paid service google offers includes phone and email support.

In my case, Google wouldn't be competing with AWS on cost, but rather, Linode.

That's a tall-order. $40/mo for a 1gb VPS is attractive.