Is the new Google Compute Engine suitable (and affordable) for running a bitcoind instance?
Comparing the GCE's pricing to Amazon EC2's pricing for the cheapest tier, it appears that Google would be cheaper should the CPU usage be small (which in case of bitcoind it should be in most cases). However, as GCE is still early in development, few people could run benchmarks on it and the prices can change abruptly (much like the prices of Google App Engine changed after the early beta period).

As it stands, Google Compute Engine looks like a viable option for cheap hosting of bitcoind.