Setting up SSL for Google Cloud Storage static website?

Question 1

Yes!

Using GCS directly via CNAME redirects only allows HTTP traffic.

To use HTTPS with your own domain, you'll need to set up Google Cloud Load Balancer, and optionally you'll want to set up Google Cloud CDN as well. While it adds a bit of complexity, Google Cloud Load Balancer allows you to fill a domain with all sorts of content. Some resources could be served by a GCS bucket, but you could also have servers in GCE serving dynamic content for other paths.

There are instructions for setting this up here: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/load-balancing/http/using-http-lb-with-cloud-storage.

Question 2

An alternative would be to host your domain DNS server at CloudFlare. They give free HTTPS to HTTP service.

More Info:

Question 3

As of April 2019: https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/troubleshooting#https

HTTPS serving Issue: I want my content served through HTTPS.

Solution: While you can serve your content through HTTPS using direct URIs such as https://storage.googleapis.com/my-bucket/my-object, when hosting a static website using a CNAME redirect, Cloud Storage only supports HTTP. To serve your content through a custom domain over SSL, set up a load balancer, use a third-party Content Delivery Network with Cloud Storage, or serve your static website content from Firebase Hosting instead of Cloud Storage.

Pretty shocking in this day and age that with letsEncrypt everywhere they have not figured out how to do this.

Question 4

An alternative would be to host your SPA on Firebase. All apps have SSL included by default even those with custom domains. They also have a CLI that makes it easy to deploy!

Question 5

If you're not tied to Cloud Storage, another alternative to host your SPA directly on App Engine, using static files. Follow this tutorial for something more compreensive.

If you still want your SPA to be stored in a Cloud Storage bucket, you can use this project to serve it through App Engine. You can host multiple websites with a single app, in fact.

Using App Engine either way, you'll get a free managed certificate, and a free monthly allowance.

Question 6

For simplicity use FireBase, the command to update is ssh firebase deploy Iv done a few thousand html files in a matter of seconds.

I would also recommend the free service CloudFlare provides as well for an extra level of protection.