Google challenges cloud rivals by making it free for customers to transfer data when they leave


Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian speaks on the Google Cloud Next occasion in San Francisco on April 9, 2019.

Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Google’s newest effort to win cloud offers over bigger rivals Amazon and Microsoft entails making it cheaper for shoppers to leave.

In a blog post Thursday, Google took purpose at cloud rivals that it says use their market energy to drive customers into “punitive” contract phrases. Google gave the instance of an organization charging 5 occasions as a lot if a consumer makes use of a competitor’s cloud and “limiting interoperability of must-have software program.” 

“Starting at this time, Google Cloud customers who want to cease utilizing Google Cloud and migrate their data to one other cloud supplier and/or on premises, can make the most of free community data transfer to migrate their data out of Google Cloud,” Amit Zavery, a Google cloud vice chairman, wrote within the put up. “This applies to all customers globally.” 

While Zavery did not identify any particular distributors, data transfer charges are a profitable income for tech firms and might serve to scale back churn as a result of they punish shoppers for going elsewhere. In 2018, Cloudflare introduced the Bandwidth Alliance, a gaggle of firms, together with some cloud suppliers, that scale back or remove these data transfer, or egress, charges. Alibaba, Google, Microsoft and Oracle are all members, however Amazon is just not.

Google is declaring that every one transfer charges must be wiped away and corporations ought to as an alternative win with their know-how and repair.

“Customers ought to select a cloud supplier as a result of it is sensible for their enterprise, not as a result of their legacy supplier has locked them in with overly restrictive contracting phrases or punitive licensing practices,” Zavery wrote.

Under the management of Thomas Kurian, Google’s cloud enterprise turned worthwhile final yr, adding prominent customers and enhancing effectivity. Kurian’s former employer, Oracle, was infamous within the pre-cloud period for locking customers into its long-standing database software program.

In the extremely aggressive and far more open world of cloud computing, locking in customers has develop into a tougher proposition. By making transfer free, Google could possibly be pressuring rivals to observe swimsuit or threat shedding out on new enterprise prospects.

Egress prices fluctuate primarily based on a number of elements, together with vacation spot, origin and data quantity. For instance, earlier than the change, an organization planning to depart from Google and transfer a petabyte of data within the Google Cloud Storage service from the northern Virginia cloud area to a non-Google U.S. data middle may need anticipated to pay round $80,000, primarily based on record costs. Large customers usually obtain reductions.

Google’s newest pronouncement follows a sample, as the corporate has been extra keen of late to criticize rivals on practices it sees as anti-competitive. Last yr Google expressed issues about Microsoft’s cloud practices to officers in the U.S. and the European Union.

“We will proceed to be vocal in our efforts to advocate on behalf of our cloud customers — a lot of whom increase issues about legacy suppliers’ licensing restrictions immediately with us,” Zavery wrote. “Much extra should be completed to finish the restrictive licensing practices which are the true barrier to buyer selection and competitors within the cloud market.”

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