Google Relaunches Cloud Price War With Cut-Price Offer

Google has fired another shot in the ongoing cloud price war by announcing a major cut in the cost of its cloud computing services.

The search giant has announced a 10% reduction across Google Compute Engine offerings as it looks to stay ahead of Microsoft’s Azure and Amazon Web Services.

The cuts, which become effective immediately and are applicable in all regions, come following “increased efficiency” in Google’s data centres, revealed Urs Hölzle, the company’s SVP of technical infrastructure, during the recent Google Atmosphere webcast.

Less is Moore

“As predicted by Moore’s Law, we can now lower prices again,” Hölzle stated. “Effective immediately, we are cutting prices of Google Compute Engine by approximately 10% for all instance types in every region.”

The price cuts were also influenced by falling hardware costs, Hölzle added, meaning Google could pass on the savings to its customers, which the company mentioned included the likes of Snapchat and Workiva.

Google launched the first salvo in the cloud price war back in March at its first Cloud Platform Live event in San Francisco, where it announced it was cutting the cost of its services by 30 percent in an attempt to attract business away from its rivals. Microsoft and Amazon followed soon after, and it will be interesting to see how they react to these latest cuts.

Google is set to host another Cloud Platform Live conference in San Francisco on Nov. 4, where it is expected to reveal more on the direction of its cloud strategy, including possible updates and expansions to its existing offerings.

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