My intention was to compare GCP with AWS. But had authentication challenge right off the gun. I opened an account and brought up an instance no problem. But then downloaded the SDK (linux version). After issuing the gcloud init - I got to the stage where it opened up a browser window with a generated URI... but then the browser just cycled issuing the oauth request. No error message was evident and the log didnt reveal anything (just echoed back the URL).
update: console showed a 304 http response (not modified?)