Google and Apple might be the biggest of rivals in mobile devices, but the cloud has a strange way of bringing people together-- multiple sources report Apple is moving a good chunk of its iCloud services from Amazon Web Services to Google Cloud Platform.
The news was first reported by CRN, before corroboration by other sources, including the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and TechCrunch. It marks a third big win in recent weeks for Google, since both Dropbox and Spotify have moved at least part of their business from AWS to the search giant turned cloud magnate.
As it is typical neither Apple nor Google have commented on the story. In its turn AWS has tersely stated “it’s kind of a puzzler to us because vendors who understand doing business with enterprises respect non-disclosure agreements with their customers and don’t imply competitive defection where it doesn’t exist."
Apple is reportedly paying Google anything from $400 to $600 million for cloud services, but it is not sure whether the figure refers to annual spending or a set amount of capacity. Morgan Stanley estimates Apple sends $1 billion annually on AWS (a mega-contract Amazon reportedly refers to internally as "Fruitstand") but adds the iPhone maker is looking to reduce the sum by moving more computing to own datacentres.
That last statement makes a lot of sense, since the last few years saw Apple invest heavily in datacentres in Arizona, Ireland and Denmark. It also means to move to Google might only be a temporary stopgap until Apple gets its facilities up and running.
While the idea of bitter rivals working together sounds odd, stranger things have happened in the technology industry-- after all, Apple itself sources a good number of components making the iPhone from no other than its other greatest rival, Samsung. In the end of the day, business remains business, be it smartphones or the cloud.
Go Cloud Makes for Strange Bedfellows: Apple Signs On With Google, Cuts Spending With AWS (CRN)
Go Apple Using Google's Cloud, Moving Some Data from Amazon (WSJ)
