Apple over the past year it has dramatically increased the amount of Apple iCloud user data it stores in Google’s cloud, The Information reports, citing
a person with direct knowledge of the matter.”
Amir Efrati and Kevin McLaughlin for The Information:
The increase cements Apple’s status as the largest corporate client for Google’s storage service, dwarfing other high-profile Google customers such as ByteDance and Spotify. As of mid-May, Apple was on track to spend around $300 million on Google cloud storage this year, which would represent an increase of roughly 50% from all of 2020, the person said.
Google Cloud staffers have apparently even given Apple an internal code name that hints at its size as a customer: “Bigfoot.”
Apple relies on a combination of its own data centers and third-party cloud storage services, such as Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services, to store iCloud user data like photos and messages. Apple does not provide third-party cloud storage providers with the keys to decrypt user data stored on their servers, ensuring a strong level of security.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple iCloud’s hunger for data storage is obviously voracious. The more data centers Apple can get online quickly, the better!
Why doesn’t Apple build more data centers of its own? If they can afford tens of billions of dollars for stock buybacks, surely they can afford to build and maintain their own data centers. If Apple is going to say something like building data center infrastructure isn’t cost effective, then I give up. It just seems like it’s penny wise and pounds foolish to use other companies’ servers. Because I don’t know the exact reason for not building more data centers, I suppose I shouldn’t criticize Apple. However, won’t Apple need even more servers for increasing it’s streaming video capacity?
I’m guessing data centers only pay for themselves if a company also stores data for third-party clients although it must be a very price-competitive business.
Simply because it is not a profiting business, I think. (Google still lose on datacenters)
Well, the story says they spend 300 million a year on that storage. I would think it would cost far more to build and maintain the same thing. Just a thought, I could be wrong.
Whatever you do… don’t use Google Fi VPN. I don’t.