# Getting Started
This page covers the following steps:
* Install Docker if you want to build and run containers on your own machine
* Set up a Google account and project for deploying to Google Cloud
* Install the gcloud CLI
* Enable Google Cloud service APIs for building, storing, and running serverless app containers
## Install Docker
If you want to build and run containers on your own machine, you'll need to install [Docker](https://www.docker.com/).
However, you don't need to install Docker if you only want to follow the examples for deploying to Google Cloud.
## Set up a Google Cloud account and project
If you intend to deploy to Google Cloud, you do need to have the following:
* A Google Cloud account with billing enabled (a [Free Program](https://cloud.google.com/free/docs/free-cloud-features) is available)
* A Google Cloud project: [Project Selector](https://console.cloud.google.com/projectselector2/home/dashboard)
> Creating a new project is recommended. This makes it easy to remove all resources by deleting the project when finished with this guide, so they don't continue to incur billing charges.
## Install gcloud
We're not going to cover using the Web Console UI. We're going to focus on using the **gcloud CLI** for all our examples instead.
- [Install gcloud](https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/install)
* [Initialize and authorize gcloud](https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/authorizing#init)
## Enable service APIS
The examples make use of the following APIs for building container images, storing them in a container registry, and deploying on Cloud Run, a serverless container platform on Google Cloud.
```
gcloud services enable \
artifactregistry.googleapis.com \
cloudbuild.googleapis.com \
cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com \
run.googleapis.com
```