I recently found out that I got funding from Google for my journal recommender project. More than I expected, too. I had hoped to receive maybe $200 or $300 of Google Cloud Platform credits, but they gave me $5000 in credits, which was quite a surprise.

This is good news for this project, because it allows me to try out some technical solutions and optimizations that would not have been possible if I were spending my own money (or CUNY’s money). Hopefully, it will allow me to create a better public-facing journal recommender tool than I could have otherwise.

I’ll try to be pragmatic about what this funding can do for this project, while keeping in mind some of the drawbacks of leaning on Google. Specifically, there are vendor lock-in risks and user privacy risks that come with using Google products. It’s best not to lose sight of these problems. Keeping those in mind, the credits give me a chance to experiment with approaches to project infrastructure without having to worry too obsessively over cost. That is welcome news.

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