> 7. Benchmarking. Customer may conduct benchmark tests of the Services (each a "Test"). Customer may only publicly disclose the results of such Tests if (a) the public disclosure includes all necessary information to replicate the Tests, and (b) Customer allows Google to conduct benchmark tests of Customer's publicly available products or services and publicly disclose the results of such tests. Notwithstanding the foregoing, Customer may not do either of the following on behalf of a hyperscale public cloud provider without Google's prior written consent: (i) conduct (directly or through a third party) any Test or (ii) disclose the results of any such Test.
It looks like that is less restrictive than it used to be. I found a blog post from last year mentioning an additional requirement to obtain Google's prior written consent prior to publishing (for all customers, not just fellow cloud providers) which no longer is included. https://cube.dev/blog/dewitt-clause-or-can-you-benchmark-a-d...
Benchmarks vary quite a bit based on specific workloads. That is why open benchmarking helps where any person can validate the benchmarks. Google enforces De-Witt clause which makes it impossible for a third party to publish such benchmarks. Quite a few cloud providers don't restrict that now.
The DeWitt clause is only there to prevent badly written performance data from getting attention it shouldn't. If anyone writes a good benchmark (good process, not good results, necessarily) to bring to us, our product teams absolutely will consider it.
