Think its a combination of factors.

- Google cloud is setup for big organizations. Not for individuals. All cloud providers are pretty much confusing in a similar way. - India has specific rules re cybersecurity and financial regulations that Google has to comply. (mandatory id verification and kyc compliance). Others have asked for an id check too.

From what confused me, if OP wanted to use a model, the easier way would have been to pay cursor/windsurf etc. and select that model. Usually that is how people try out a new model. Trying out a specific way means going through the norms every country imposes, and bloat in case of legacy products.

AWS and Azure have come up with their own models. If their future versions hit close to sota and people want to use it, many would end up in a similar loop (and woudl be easier to just use it from the aggregators).