Ask your favorite tech what companies they think of when it comes to a cloud storage provider, and it’s a pretty safe bet that Google Object Cloud Storage makes the short list. It should therefore come as no surprise that Google also offers object storage as part of its cloud offering.
According to Statista, a space veteran, Google gets about 7% of its revenue from cloud storage (opens in new tab), which equates to approximately $13 billion in 2020. The Google Cloud Platform can host SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS for groups around the world through its hyperscale data centers. All of this contributed to the search engine giant’s $256.7 billion revenue for 2021. In fact, as many as 19% of organizations run their workloads through the Google Cloud Platform.
Google Object Cloud Storage: plans and pricing
Google Cloud plans to be transparent about its pricing and also offers a $300 credit that can be spent for 90 days to let users try out the service. The better route to get prices is through a custom quote because for a beginner, pricing can be quite confusing.
If you look around, there are prices for the Google Cloud Services, but the prices vary depending on the region of the country the data is served from, as well as whether it’s in a single region, a dual region, or multiple regions of North America. is . Prizes are also available on different continents.
For a single server in South Carolina designated US-east1, for standard storage (as opposed to archiving, nearline, or coldline which each have different costs), the cost is $0.20 per GB per month.
Google Object Cloud Storage: Features
It’s pretty easy to see why companies turn to Google when it comes to cloud services. As such a large company, Google can provide multicloud solutions, with a high degree of efficiency and reliability that few other solutions can provide. This then provides a consistent platform throughout the deployment with “A service-oriented view of your entire environment.”
There is also a “trusted cloud infrastructure” that provides a high level of security for all stored data, and in fact data is protected through the same tools that Google uses to keep its own data safe. This includes progressive layers for a scaled defense and includes encryption of data at rest as well as in transit. This encryption is AES256, through Google’s central key management service, and inclusion of the FIPS 140-2 Level 1 validated module, BoringCrypto, used in the Google Cloud services.
Google Object Cloud Storage: Support
Support for the Google Cloud Platform is certainly there and available, although not as immediate as we’d like to see. Although a direct number is listed, it is intended to call the sales team, on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. There is also an option to fill out a contact form for a callback request, this is also for the sales team.
There is no direct number listed for support. Instead, users should go to the support section of the site. From there, a project has to be selected first, and then there are a few choices, including chat, phone, and community support.
All Google Cloud users get the basic support included with the subscription, but it only provides billing assistance, community access, and self-help documentation.
There is the option to upgrade support, starting with the Standard tier. While the only language available is English, it does add support for multi-channel billing, multi-channel technical support, and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. response for high-impact issues, and a four-hour response for P2 issues. The cost is $29 per month, plus 3% of the monthly fee.
Then there’s enhanced support, which upgrades to a 1-hour response for a P1 issue, 24/7 response for high-impact issues, and technical support escalations available. This better support significantly increases the cost to $500/month, with an additional 3% of the monthly cost. It also adds to the supporting languages to include English, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese and Korean.
Finally, priority support, which further ramps up the ante to a 15 minute response time for a P1 issue, has an assigned Technical Account Manager, an Event Management Service, training credits, and Customer Aware support. This support level requires a monthly premium of $12.5K along with 4% of the monthly fee.
Also consider:
Google Cloud Service is certainly a reasonable option in this space, and we can see why so many companies choose it given its robust and secure servers. We would compare it to IDrive e2 (opens in new tab)another object cloud provider that offers high server uptime with cross-platform support, but also has a free tier along with great pricing and better support.
final verdict
The Google Cloud Platform has a significant market share for many good reasons. These include the free trial, the nearly endless options for choosing storage with the ability to specify locations and numbers of servers, and the AES256 encryption throughout.
We found some shortcomings, such as that this service is more expensive, and depending on the level, the support can add seriously thousands more to the cost for a user who needs the highest level of support. However, for an enterprise application that needs a top-notch service, this Google Cloud Platform is well worth being on the shortlist of object service providers.
We also presented the best free cloud storage.
