Mark Bergen, writing for re/code:
In its bid to raise its name in cloud computing services, Google nabbed a big-name customer: Apple. The iPhone-maker recently started storing portions of its iCloud and services data with Google’s cloud platform, according to sources familiar with the deal.
It’s a win for Google, which is gunning for larger companies as cloud customers. But it might be short-lived, as it looks like Apple is also simultaneously building out its own system to bring data stored on its millions of devices in house.
And:
For Apple, though, the deal might portend a move to cut costs ahead of creating its own cloud storage system. Google’s cloud team is in deal-making mode, aggressively seeking to bring in new customers to use its cloud services, and may have sweetened the deal — or been more willing than AWS and Azure to concede to Apple’s demands. (And Apple, if anything, is good at aggressive demand-making.)
Amazing to me that Apple hasn’t already solved this problem, given their goal of owning the entire stack.
“For Apple, though, the deal might portend a move to cut costs ahead of creating its own cloud storage system.”
Creating? Apple already has its own cloud storage system. It’s about capacity. Right now, Apple can’t build data storage fast enough to meet its user growth. Apple’s data storage infrastructure is also not as global as that of Google and others, and may not want to be … for now.
I read Google is probably losing money on this contract. Sounds good for Apple as they ramp up servers.
I hope Google’s cloud services are more secure than their mobile OS.
it seems like a temporary move while Apple goes fully self-sufficient with their Project McQueen. Also of note is Dropbox’s recent move off of AWS that included custom hardware and adopting Rust as a system programming language.
Nope their goal is not to own the entire stack but to own the strategic pieces. That’s a big difference.
But yeah, it’s surprising to see this didn’t happen sooner.
It has happened sooner. Apple was (still is) a customer of Microsoft Azure.
They’re still relying on third parties for their cloud infrastructure so it didn’t happen yet, they are not fully in control of that part.