Google launches alleged Amazon Web Services killer, but lacks maturity, options
Summary: Google has thrown down a Amazon Web Services challenge, but has a way to go to match its rival on breadth and depth. — Google launched Compute Engine Infrastructure as a Service in a bid …
Context & Ripple Effects
Google had already signaled its cloud ambitions through new storage and App Engine offerings in 2011, and May reporting placed Google alongside Microsoft in a broader effort to target Amazon's cloud lead. Compute Engine turns that positioning into an infrastructure-as-a-service product available to outside developers.
The launch gives Google a direct entry in the compute layer, but the article’s central constraint is execution: its offering does not yet match Amazon Web Services’ breadth and depth. That makes product maturity and service options the immediate competitive tests, rather than the announcement alone.
First-order effects
- Google offers external developers Compute Engine infrastructure, creating a Google-hosted alternative for workloads that might otherwise go to Amazon Web Services.
- Amazon Web Services gains a more direct challenger from Google, whose earlier cloud products had already been aimed at AWS.
Second-order effects
- Google must close the breadth-and-depth gap identified in the article to make Compute Engine a credible choice for customers comparing cloud platforms.
- Microsoft’s reported cloud push means AWS faces pressure from multiple large platform companies, while developers gain more leverage to compare compute offerings.
Third-order effects
- If Google turns its storage, application, and compute products into a cohesive portfolio, cloud competition shifts from isolated services toward fuller infrastructure platforms.
- The contest increasingly depends on whether large internet companies can convert internal infrastructure into reliable, broad external services—a commercialization challenge as much as a technical one.
The trend: Major platform companies are moving their internal computing infrastructure into the external cloud market, challenging AWS through increasingly complete service portfolios.