We introduced Google Cloud Trace at Google I/O 2014 and gave an in-depth talk and demo at Google Cloud Platform Live back in November. Today, we’re announcing the beta release of Google Cloud Trace which is now available to all Google Cloud Platform customers. 

With Google Cloud Trace, you can diagnose performance issues in your production application by quickly finding the traces for slow requests and viewing a detailed report of where time is spent in your application while processing these requests. Its trace analysis feature allows you to see the latency distribution for your application, and find the painfully slow requests that may be affecting only a small number of your users. You can also use the trace analysis feature to check if the performance of a new release is better than the previous release. Read more here: http://goo.gl/6YMmus

ICYMI: December on Cloud Platform had holiday cheer, Dataflow deep dives, Customer Stories and more: http://goo.gl/uFSIwC

A highlight for me this year was demoing Google Cloud Debugger at Google Cloud Platform Live. Google Cloud Debugger frees you from searching through logs to debug an issue by giving you direct access to the stack and locals of an application running in production with no negative effects on the production application.   The audience (live and online) really appreciated the value of the debugger and the fun demo application, Emojislator!  

I am looking forward to saving developers even more time in 2015!  

http://goo.gl/jXbdc0

--Posted by Brad Abrams, Product Manager

This year, we launched a pair of projects in the Linux application container orchestration space: Kubernetes, an OSS cluster manager, and Google Container Engine, its premium hosted analog.The velocity and agility of the sister projects has been quite inspiring. Some of the most memorable ‘achievement unlocked’ moments for the two projects in 2014 are:

Becoming the most popular orchestration framework on GitHub with ~5200 stars.

Watching the community around Kubernetes grow, including having Microsoft and IBM sign on to support Kubernetes within a month of launch.

Seeing multiple PaaS providers, including OpenShift, Deis and Cloud Foundry, embrace Kubernetes as a standard orchestration framework.

Watching Google Container Engine help you guys do more and more and account for ~2% of Google Compute Engine instance use within a month of launch.

Seeing an Apple job posting with Kubernetes listed as a desired skill!
Overall it has been an incredible year for Google Cloud Platform.  We look forward to 2015, where we will continue to innovate but also create a rock solid new business for Google in the containers space.

http://goo.gl/P7DgZS

- Posted by Craig McLuckie, Product Manager

Dr. Alexander Kühn of Alacris on how they use Cloud Platform to fight cancer:

"Use of Google Cloud Platform has made it possible for us to rapidly refine and improve our modeling system, which has become about 10x faster than using the Alacris’ computer cluster (which contains only 100 cores). These improvements will help (a) to optimize personalized cancer therapy by removing some of the risks associated with classical empirically administered treatments and (b) to optimize the predictive power of virtual clinical trials to test drugs before they go into clinical trials."

http://goo.gl/1K9q1K

As we end the year, let me observe that developers have it too easy today. Back in the day, we at Google had to build infrastructure with our own bare hands, after walking for hours through three feet of snow with no shoes, uphill, both ways! And once in the datacenter, sweat poured from our faces as we racked up endless stacks of 40-pound servers in sweltering exhaust heat so hot that the sweat drops evaporated before they hit the floor. Those were the days where doubling your capacity meant long days of backbreaking work.

And now you can just lean back, sip your latte, and use the fruits of our hard labor, blood, sweat and tears, and focus on just your idea without worrying about the engine behind your company. You have no idea what a server looks like, and think of adding ten new servers as a single command line to type.

And that’s exactly how it should be -- we’ve been through this pain so you don’t have to go through it. And we know where you want to go, and we’ll be there with you, evolving our platform as quickly as you evolve your ideas. I’m very excited about what Google Cloud Platform will bring in 2015...and I think you’ll be too once you see what we have in store. By the end of the year, whether you develop for an enterprise or for consumers, I hope you’ll agree that the rate of innovation in public clouds has never been higher, and that Google Cloud Platform is driving it. Happy new year!

http://goo.gl/2qIFGs

- Posted by +Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President

On September 12 of this year, we launched Google Cloud Platform for Startups at the Google for Entrepreneurs Global Partner Summit. In the few short months the offer has been available, we have seen tremendous traction with our investor, accelerator, and incubator partners and the companies taking advantage of credits, technical support, and mentoring.

Partners like TechStars, Galvanize, and Founder Institute have nominated hundreds of companies that are building amazing products on top of the Google Cloud Platform and are seeing tremendous growth.

Rabbit, a Google Ventures backed company, is bringing people closer together with video chat and rich content sharing on top of Google Cloud Platform. Founder and CTO, Philippe Clavel says, “Having a strong, consistent network is very important for video communications, and Google Cloud is the best solution out there. We were able to move from our previous provider (AWS) in just two weeks, and the transition was easy for us and seamless to our users.

I have been amazed by the quality of companies taking advantage of the offer and the excitement in the community about Google Cloud Platform. To think 2014 was just the beginning!

http://goo.gl/ELbjKK

--Posted by Brian Gorbett, Senior Program Manager

As we close out 2014 and think about all the new technology we've seen our users get access to over the years, we sometimes forget the people who work hard everyday to make it possible. For me, as the head of marketing, my highlight has been growing an organization of people who wake up every morning around the world to delight you, our users. We live to excite, educate, inspire and help. 

http://goo.gl/rU8bCs

- Posted by Brian Goldfarb, Head of Marketing 

This year, Google Cloud Platform was named the Best Cloud Computing Provider in the Lifehacker Reader’s Choice Awards. Every year, Lifehacker Awards finalists are nominated by editors and selected by readers over a week-long voting process. 
In addition, Google Compute Engine was named the Best IaaS Solution of the Year by the Storage, Virtualization, Cloud (SVC) Awards for its extensive array of features and unmatched customer results. The SVC Awards recognize exceptional products and services operating in the cloud, virtualization and storage sectors. Finalist are selected by the SVC Awards editorial board, and winners are determined by a public vote. 

It’s been a great 2014, from setting the standard for container-based cloud computing with Kubernetes and Google Container Engine to being the first to combine live migration technology with data center innovation to our focus on security and providing encryption at rest.  Looking forward to a great 2015 and continuing to help companies grow and innovate! 

http://goo.gl/yk9TEK

- Posted by Danielle Aronstam, Communications Manager 

More MySQL database management tools at your fingertips: GreenSQL database security and compliance solution is now available as a click-to-deploy on Cloud Platform: http://goo.gl/veMKv0