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Google Expands in Microsoft, Amazon Territory; Heads for the Cloud

Google (News - Alert) isn’t a company that rests on its laurels. The search engine behemoth is expanding its presence in the northwest by doubling its office space in Seattle, just a stone’s throw from Microsoft (News - Alert) and Amazon. What makes this all the more interesting is these tech titans are all vying for the same business: cloud services. All three are in hot pursuit of the next best business boom and all within miles from each other.

Of course, Google brings with its expansion both engineering and cloud technology jobs, perhaps dangling the carrot for talent over at Amazon and Microsoft, promising a more prosperous future with a heck of an employee program. Although, recent litigation has squelched that idea, however coincidental it may seem.

Chee Chew, Google’s onsite manager and Director of Engineering, oversees several teams of software engineers that work on many Google products including Hangouts, Google+, Google Maps and the Chrome browser. With the increase cloud services consumption, Google has its eye on the prize and, as it is wont to do, strives to make more Google products that utilize the ethereal cloud.

Google’s already existing Google Cloud Platform includes many online services for software apps and data storage, like Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, and BigQuery. While experimental in their beginning stages, these services now come with tiered paid support options to be more competitive with similar services, like Amazon Web Services (News - Alert).

Cloud computing has clearly proven a boon for businesses. The metaphor says that a cloud brings rain, and so with cloud service offerings, revenue is likely to pour in.

Cloud services have been providing consumers with their own hard drive in the cloud. Such services have become popular because they are affordable, convenient and provide ample storage space. Perhaps the biggest appeal of such services is their accessibility; they can provide access to documents, photos, videos and any other saved files from any device with Internet access. Beyond that, cloud services have grown into app development, Web development and so much more.

With its reputation, it makes sense that Google is tangoing with its competition quite literally in their backyards. Considering that its cloud-based operation is significantly smaller than that of Microsoft’s, it’s a rather tough and courageous move both in the physical sense and within the cloud services market.

However, if there’s one thing we’ve learned from Google, it’s that an empire can be built simply on cheap, off-the-shelves tools and that it pays to stray from the industry standards. While this next move for Google is not as simple as it was building an effective system for processing large amounts of data, it is certainly a step in the next best direction.