The Google Cloud platform was introduced; users were asked to set up a free trial account and explore the menu features. Google Cloud, is a powerful platform where you can build websites, apps, scale applications and virtual machines. Many of the tools available in the platform, will be used in this course.You were shown the Google Cloud platform dashboard and toggle menu items, for products and services. The Google Cloud platform Activity menu, displays the activity associated with projects. Users can be added, removed and given access to projects, in the IAM and Admin area. The Google cloud shell area was shown; the shell allows for input commands and the creation of instances.Microservices development was defined, explained and contrasted with Monolithic architecture. Monolithic architecture can work well for smaller organizations; web pages, classes and config files for example, are contained in one database.