# Google Cloud Google Cloud is a suite of cloud computing services by Google, offering modular services like computing, storage, analytics, and machine learning on the same infrastructure as Google's consumer products. Google Cloud is a suite of cloud computing services offered by Google that provides a series of modular cloud services including computing, data storage, data analytics, and machine learning, alongside a set of management tools. It runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for its end-user products, such as Google Search, Gmail, and Google Docs. Registration requires a credit card or bank account details. Google Cloud provides infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and serverless computing environments. The platform traces its origins to April 2008, when Google announced App Engine, a platform for developing and hosting web applications in Google-managed data centers, which was the first cloud computing service from the company. The service became generally available in November 2011. Since then, Google has added numerous cloud services to the platform. Google Cloud includes the Google Cloud public cloud infrastructure, as well as Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), enterprise versions of Android and ChromeOS, and application programming interfaces (APIs) for machine learning and enterprise mapping services. Since at least 2022, Google's official materials have stated that "Google Cloud" is the new name for "Google Cloud Platform," which may cause naming confusion. ## Compute Services Google Cloud offers a range of compute options to suit different deployment models. App Engine is a platform as a service for deploying applications developed with Java, PHP, Node.js, Python, C#, .NET, Ruby, and Go. Compute Engine provides infrastructure as a service to run Microsoft Windows and Linux virtual machines. For containerized workloads, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) offers containers as a service based on Kubernetes, and GKE on-prem is available as part of the Anthos platform. Cloud Functions delivers functions as a service for event-driven code written in Node.js, Java, Python, or Go. Cloud Run is a compute execution environment based on Knative, offered as fully managed or as Cloud Run for Anthos; it supports GCP, AWS, and VMware management. ## Storage and Databases For data persistence, Google Cloud provides multiple storage and database services. Cloud Storage is object storage with integrated edge caching for unstructured data. Cloud SQL offers database as a service based on MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Microsoft SQL Server. Cloud Bigtable is a managed NoSQL database service. Cloud Spanner is a horizontally scalable, strongly consistent relational database service. Cloud Datastore is a NoSQL database for web and mobile applications. Persistent Disk provides block storage for Compute Engine virtual machines. Cloud Memorystore is a managed in-memory data store based on Redis and Memcached. Local SSD offers high-performance, transient local block storage. Filestore provides high-performance file storage, and AlloyDB is a fully managed PostgreSQL-compatible database service. ## Networking Google Cloud's networking services enable secure and efficient connectivity. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) manages the software-defined network of cloud resources. Cloud Load Balancing is a software-defined, managed service for load balancing traffic. Cloud Armor is a web application firewall that protects workloads from DDoS attacks. Cloud CDN is a content delivery network based on Google's globally distributed edge points of presence. Cloud Interconnect connects a data center directly to Google Cloud. Cloud DNS is a managed, authoritative DNS hosting service running on the same infrastructure as Google. Network Service Tiers allow users to choose between Premium and Standard network tiers for performance needs. ## Big Data and Analytics Google Cloud offers a suite of big data tools. BigQuery is a scalable, managed enterprise data warehouse for analytics. Cloud Dataflow is a managed service based on Apache Beam for stream and batch data processing. Cloud Data Fusion is a managed ETL service based on the open-source Cask Data Application Platform. Dataproc is a big data platform for running Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark jobs. Cloud Composer is a managed workflow orchestration service built on Apache Airflow. Cloud Datalab is a fully managed Jupyter Notebook service for data exploration, analysis, visualization, and machine learning. Cloud Dataprep, based on Trifacta, visually explores, cleans, and prepares data for analysis. Cloud Pub/Sub is a scalable event ingestion service based on message queues. Looker Studio is a business intelligence tool for visualizing data through dashboards and reports, and Looker is a full business intelligence platform. ## Cloud AI and Machine Learning Google Cloud provides a comprehensive set of AI and machine learning services. Cloud AutoML allows users to train and deploy custom machine learning models; as of September 2018, the service was in beta. Cloud TPU offers accelerators used by Google to train machine learning models, which are also available to customers. Cloud Machine Learning Engine is a managed service for training and building machine learning models using mainstream frameworks. Cloud Talent Solution (formerly Cloud Job Discovery) leverages Google's search and machine learning capabilities for the recruiting ecosystem. Dialogflow Enterprise is a development environment for building conversational interfaces. Cloud Natural Language provides text analysis based on Google Deep Learning models. Cloud Speech-to-Text converts speech to text, and Cloud Text-to-Speech converts text to speech. Cloud Translation API dynamically translates between thousands of language pairs. Cloud Vision API performs image analysis, and Cloud Video Intelligence analyzes video content. ## Management and Security Tools To manage cloud resources, Google Cloud offers the Operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) for monitoring, logging, tracing, and diagnostics. Cloud Deployment Manager deploys resources defined in templates created in YAML, Python, or Jinja2. Cloud Console is the web interface for managing resources, and Cloud Shell provides browser-based command-line access. The Cloud Console Mobile App is available for Android and iOS. Cloud APIs allow programmatic access to resources. For identity and security, Cloud Identity provides single sign-on based on SAML 2.0 and OpenID. Cloud IAM defines policies based on role-based access control. Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy controls access to applications without using a VPN. Cloud Data Loss Prevention API automatically discovers, classifies, and redacts sensitive data. Security Key Enforcement offers two-step verification using a security key. Cloud Key Management Service is a cloud-hosted key management service integrated with IAM and audit logging. Cloud Resource Manager manages resources by project, folder, and organization. Cloud Security Command Center is a security and data risk platform for services running in Google Cloud. ## Relationship to Other Google AI Efforts Google Cloud is distinct from [google-deepmind](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/google-deepmind), the AI research laboratory also owned by Alphabet. While DeepMind focuses on fundamental research and has produced breakthroughs like [AlphaFold](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/alphafold), Google Cloud operationalizes AI for enterprise customers through its managed services and infrastructure, including [artificial-intelligence](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/artificial-intelligence) and [machine-learning](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/machine-learning) offerings. The platform's AI services are built on Google's internal technologies, but they are delivered as cloud products for external use. This separation allows Google to offer AI capabilities broadly while keeping research and product development distinct. As of the early 2020s, Google Cloud has positioned itself as a major competitor in the cloud market alongside [amazon-web-services](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/amazon-web-services) and [azure](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/azure), with a particular emphasis on data analytics and AI workloads. --- Source: https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/google-cloud License: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) Last updated: 2026-09-05T13:21:22.908626+00:00