Can Google Compute instances be started and stopped on a schedule?

Question

I run a simple task 3 times a day from my desktop computer. It connects to a certain website at 4pm, 8pm, and 1am, downloads a small amount of data (less then 50mb), and stores

Answer 1

There's also a 3rd party service called VMPower which does exactly this with a calendar interface. It's a lot quicker & flexible than writing a script and it has a decent free tier.