Building Serverless Applications with Google Cloud Run

Chapter 1. Introduction

Cloud Run is a platform on Google Cloud that lets you build scalable and reliable web-based applications. As a developer, you can get very close to being able to just write your code and push it, and then let the platform deploy, run, and scale your application for you.

Public cloud has provided the opportunity to developers and businesses to turn physical servers and data centers into virtual ones, greatly decreasing lead time and turning big, up-front investments in physical servers and data centers into ongoing operational expenses. For most businesses, this is already a great step forward.

However, virtual machines and virtual networks are still a relatively low-level abstraction. You can take an even bigger leap if you design your application to take full advantage of the modern cloud platform. Cloud Run provides a higher level of abstraction over the actual server infrastructure and allows you to focus on code, not infrastructure.

Using the higher-level abstraction that Cloud Run provides doesn’t mean you tie yourself to Google Cloud forever. First, Cloud Run requires your application to be packaged in a container—a portable way to deploy and run your application. If your container runs on Cloud Run, you can also run it on your own server, using Docker, for instance. Second, the Cloud Run platform is based on the open Knative specification, which means you can migrate your applications to another vendor or your own hardware with limited effort.