Google Cloud has announced plans to launch a host of new cloud regions in Europe and Africa, in an effort to meet growing customer demand around the world.
As detailed during Google Cloud Next '22, the company will open new regions in Austria, Greece, Norway, Sweden, and South Africa which, combined with previous commitments, will expand the reach of the network to 48 total locations.
On-premises customers in new regions should benefit from improved latency, as well as the ability to more easily meet complex residency and data security requirements. By 2030, Google also expects the expansion to create more than 300.000 additional jobs in the countries in question.
Google cloud performance
The expansion of Google Cloud into new regions demonstrates Google's continued commitment to growing its public cloud division. However, unlike rivals Amazon and Microsoft, Google has yet to find a way to push its cloud computing business into the green.
Although Google Cloud had a run rate of $6300 billion last quarter (up 35% from the previous year), it had a total loss of $850 million. In the last four years, the division has lost around €17 billion.
With rising energy prices and inflation expected to drive up the cost of data center hardware, Google Cloud is unlikely to reach profitability in the near future.
Google's message, in emphasizing recorded losses, was that money must be spent to be earned. According to Ruth Porat, CFO, the plan is to continue to invest heavily in expanding Google Cloud's network infrastructure, to position the company to capitalize on the rapidly growing cloud market.
“While cloud operating loss and operating margin improved in 2021, we plan to continue to invest aggressively in cloud given the significant market opportunity we see,” he said during a February conference call with analysts. “We remain focused on the long-term path to profitability and over time, operating loss and operating margin should benefit from increased scale.
Google Cloud currently operates 35 regions (five of which will open in 2022), 106 availability zones, and 173 edge locations. But coupled with plans made earlier this year to add new regions like Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand and Thailand, the Cloud Next announcements will dramatically increase the size of this network.
"These cloud regions help bring Google innovations closer to our customers around the world and provide a platform that enables organizations to transform the way they do business," Google said.