Google Cloud is about to get a whole lot more expensive

Google Cloud Logo
(Image credit: Google Cloud)

Following significant investments into its infrastructure product portfolio over the past several years, Google Cloud has announced that it will be raising prices for some products and lowering prices for others.

The move is designed to align the company's capabilities and pricing with the varied workloads of its customers. As such, Google Cloud is giving customers more choice in how they pay for what they use along with new, flexible SKUs with new product options and capabilities. 

In a blog post, VP and GM of Google Cloud Infrastructure, Sachin Gupta explained that the company's planned price changes will allow it to better align its offerings with those of other leading cloud providers so that customers can more easily compare services between vendors.

Google Cloud's price changes will go into effect on October 1 of this year. However, the impact of these pricing changes will depend on how customers use its cloud services, so some could end up paying more while others end up paying less.

Price increases

Google Cloud plans to change prices for some of its storage, compute and networking products. In its announcement, the company highlights how customers will have new ways to optimize their spending based on workload type and size or data portability needs as a result.

First off, the price of cloud storage for data mobility including replication of data written to dual or multi-region storage buckets will increase along with inter-region data access.

At the same time, Google Cloud will introduce a new lower-cost archive snapshot option for Persistent Disk (PD) so that those using the service for compliance or archiving will be charged less that those doing compute-intensive DevOps workloads. 

In terms of pricing, customers will soon pay ($0.019/GB for regional, $0.024/GB for multi-region) and this also applies when creating the initial snapshot. Going forward, standard regional snapshots will cost $0.05GB/month and multi-regional snapshots will cost $0.065 GB/month which is an increase from $0.026 per GB per month.

The company is also adding new outbound data processing pricing for Cloud Load Balancing with the aim of being in line with other leading cloud providers like AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Finally, Network Topology, which was introduced for free last year, will now be a paid product and customers will need to pay $0.0011 per resource hour used. However, Google Cloud plans to soften the blow with the addition of Performance Dashboard within its Network Intelligence Center at no additional charge.

As we still have some time before these price increases go into effect, Google could make some changes. Until then though, Google Cloud customers can check out the company's pricing page for all of the latest information on what the search giant charges for its storage, compute and networking products.

Via The Register

Anthony Spadafora

After working with the TechRadar Pro team for the last several years, Anthony is now the security and networking editor at Tom’s Guide where he covers everything from data breaches and ransomware gangs to the best way to cover your whole home or business with Wi-Fi. When not writing, you can find him tinkering with PCs and game consoles, managing cables and upgrading his smart home.