Google Cloud just fired a major volley at AWS as the cloud wars heat up

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AWS takes a major blow from Google Cloud

Google Cloud
(Image credit: Google Cloud)

Google Cloud has announced “significant price-performance improvements” for Cloud Spanner, its database management and storage service, slamming Amazon in the process.

Group Product Manager Jagdeep Singh and Director of Engineering Pritam Shah compared Cloud Spanner to Amazon’s DynamoDB, which costs twice as much.

Despite significant improvements to Cloud Spanner’s performance, Google did not revise its pricing, making the latest iteration more cost-effective for companies, and more of a threat to rival services.

Google Cloud Spanner has bold claims

Headlining the update are “up to 50% increase in throughput and 2.5 times the storage per node” compared with previously and single-digit millisecond latency figures.

Google Cloud says that “Spanner now offers up to 2x better read throughput per dollar compared to Amazon DynamoDB for similar workloads,” effectively making it half the price of Amazon’s counterpart.

Singh and Shah also draw reference to an Amazon post that highlighted DynamoDB’s ability to process 126 million queries per second at peak. Google promises to improve this by 20 times, up to 3 billion.

The rivalry between many of the largest tech firms has been heating up recently as they go head-to-head in antitrust cases, with complaints seemingly being lodged left, right, and center.

Amazon, together with Microsoft, is now facing a CMA probe in the UK after Ofcom complained about its dominance in the cloud market. Both companies combined account for 70-80% in the UK at a roughly equal split.

As consumer focus will inevitably begin to shift away from the lead players, Google could see this as an opportunity to plug its own technologies. It says that improvements are now available in “select regional and multi-region instance configurations,” and further enhancements will continue to roll out over the coming months.

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Craig Hale
Craig Hale

With several years’ experience freelancing in tech and automotive circles, Craig’s specific interests lie in technology that is designed to better our lives, including AI and ML, productivity aids, and smart fitness. He is also passionate about cars and the decarbonisation of personal transportation. As an avid bargain-hunter, you can be sure that any deal Craig finds is top value!