Featured in this episode of Tech News of the Week
Despite the breathless headlines, the truth is slightly more mundane. Google Cloud has announced a change to data egress charges only if you are planning to terminate your Google Cloud account. The change does not impact normal egress charges, which continue to be extortionate across the cloud spectrum.
If you would like to terminate your account on Google Cloud and move all your data somewhere else, you can do so without incurring egress charges. But that is the extent of their beneficience. Granted, this is definitely a step in the right direction and if you have a few petabytes of data in Google Cloud, the egress charge wasn’t going to be cheap! And Google is probably trying to get ahead of regulations that are being drafted in the EU about this very sort of lock-in. So, I guess good for you Google Cloud, maybe you could cut normal egress costs a lot too?
The post goes on to bemoan the true villain of cloud lock-in, Microsoft. Er, I mean, “certain legacy providers.” To quote in full, “Certain legacy providers leverage their on-premises software monopolies to create cloud monopolies, using restrictive licensing practices that lock in customers and warp competition.”
Jesus Google, just say Microsoft. We ALL KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN. And they’re not wrong when it comes to SQL and Windows licensing. Of course both those platforms are in serious decline when it comes to cloud applications, so I don’t know if their argument really holds water. Like I said, maybe focus on those other egress fees first.