Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud Platform is a cloud computing service by Google that offers hosting on the same supporting infrastructure that Google uses internally for end-user products like Google Search and YouTube.^[1] Cloud Platform provides developer products to build a range of programs from simple websites to complex applications.^[2][3]

Google Cloud Platform is a part of a suite of enterprise services from Google for Work and provides a set of modular cloud-based services with a host of development tools. For example, hosting and computing, cloud storage, data storage, translations APIs and prediction APIs.^[2]

Elements

• Google App Engine - IaaS service providing virtual machines similar to Amazon EC2
• BigQuery - PaaS service providing map reduce services. Similar to Hadoop
• Google Cloud Functions - Currently in alpha testing FaaS service allowing functions to be triggered by events without developer resource management similar to Amazon Lambda or IBM OpenWhisk

Timeline

• April 2008 - Google App Engine was released as a preview.^[4]
• May 2010 - Google Cloud Storage launched.^[5]
• July 2012 - Google creates the Google Cloud Platform Partner Program.^[6]
• October 2012 - shortly after the Amazon outage, Google App Engine experienced a major outage that also affected Tumblr and Dropbox.^[7]
• April 2012 - BigQuery, first presented in March, went into General Availability (GA).^[8]
• December 2013 - After an 18-month preview Google Compute Engine was released GA.^[9]
• February 2014 -Google Cloud SQL was released as GA.^[10]
• March 2014 - During the Google Cloud Platform Live, Google announced their biggest price drop affecting all products between a 30% and 85%.^[11]
• March 2014 - Google announced Managed Virtual Machines, a new feature to overcome the traditional limitations in Google App Engine.^[12]
• February 11, 2016 - Google Cloud Functions announced for preview ^[13]
• February 22, 2016 - Google Cloud Dataproc entered general availability.^[14]