Apple is now Google's largest corporate customer for cloud storage

AppleInsider · June 29, 2021 1:46PM

Apple has dramatically increased the amount of data that it stores on Google's cloud services, suggesting that its storage needs have grown faster than it can handle with its own servers.

Credit: Google

As of May 2021, Apple was on track to spend about $300 million on Google cloud storage services in 2021, about a 50% increase year-over-year, a source told The Information.

Back in November 2020 alone, Apple increased the amount of user data it stored on Google services by about 470 petabytes, bringing the total amount of data it had on Google's cloud to more than 8 exabytes. For reference, a single exabyte is enough to record a video call that's more than 237,000 years long.

Apple now ranks as the largest corporate client of Google's cloud services. Within Google, Apple even has a name indicative at its size: Bigfoot. Back in 2018, Apple confirmed that it used Google for user data storage needs.

The data needs of Apple also far eclipse any other Google customer. Apple's 470-petabyte increase in November was about the same as the total amount of storage used by Google's second largest customer, TikTok maker ByteDance.

Apple also appears to be getting a great deal for Google cloud storage. According to cost calculators on Google's website, storing 8 exabytes of data costs about $218 million per month. Apple, again, pays Google about $300 million per year storing the same amount.

It isn't clear why Apple's storage on Google cloud services has increased so dramatically. However, the purchase suggests that either it is more cost-effective for Apple to buy storage than it is to build out new capacity, or Apple has grown so big so quickly that it couldn't source, build, and maintain the first-party servers in a timely fashion that is needed to store the data.

After Apple and ByteDance, Spotify was Google's third largest customer with about 460 petabytes of data, Twitter came in fourth with 315 petabytes, and Snapchat ranked third with about 275 petabytes.

Apple stores user iCloud data on both Amazon Web Services and Google's cloud. That data is encrypted by Apple, meaning that neither Amazon nor Google can obtain the the customer's iCloud information.

Although AWS still accounts for a lion's share of the total cloud storage market, Google has carved out a niche for itself. Apple, for example, uses a form of Google cloud storage known as object storage, which is designed to handle data needs like audio and video files, as well as documents.

Keep up with everything Apple in the weekly AppleInsider Podcast -- and get a fast news update from AppleInsider Daily. Just say, "Hey, Siri," to your HomePod mini and ask for these podcasts, and our latest HomeKit Insider episode too.If you want an ad-free main AppleInsider Podcast experience, you can support the AppleInsider podcast by subscribing for $5 per month through Apple's Podcasts app, or via Patreon if you prefer any other podcast player.

22july2013 · June 29, 2021 1:54PM

AppleInsider said:
As of May 2021, Apple was on track to spend about $300 million on Google cloud storage services in 2021

Does anyone have a list of all the services Apple pays Google for annually?

lkrupp · June 29, 2021 1:57PM

Not a bad deal when considering that Google pays Apple $Billions to be the default search engine on Apple products.

DAalseth · June 29, 2021 2:03PM

I seem to remember some years ago Apple was trying to move off of outside storage and bring everything in house.

asdasd · June 29, 2021 2:26PM

DAalseth said:

I seem to remember some years ago Apple was trying to move off of outside storage and bring everything in house.

Not their code speciality.

Apple Data must be huge, I mean there 1 billion devices uploading every day,.

GG1 · June 29, 2021 3:36PM

Don't Apple have several data centres around the world, including a few in the US (AZ, NC)? I guess Apple outgrew them, or it's more cost efficient to have a third party (Google) handle the ever-increasing hardware needs.

pulseimages · June 29, 2021 3:58PM

I wish Apple offered iCloud sizes bigger than 2TB.

gatorguy · June 29, 2021 4:24PM

lkrupp said:

Not a bad deal when considering that Google pays Apple $Billions to be the default search engine on Apple products.

No one knows what Google pays Apple. It's all "edumacated" guesses, but perhaps Apple and Google are giving each other discounts, high-level bartering.

sigma902 · June 29, 2021 4:41PM

My ideas for sudden growth in past months
- lossless & spatial Music
- Apple TV+ library expansion
- Xcloud coming up

DAalseth · June 29, 2021 5:45PM

pulseimages said:

I wish Apple offered iCloud sizes bigger than 2TB.

Oddly enough I want the opposite. I have no need for 2TB, but I’m soon going to outgrow 200GB. I want a tier in the middle somewhere.

StrangeDays · June 29, 2021 8:10PM

gatorguy said:

lkrupp said:

Not a bad deal when considering that Google pays Apple $Billions to be the default search engine on Apple products.

No one knows what Google pays Apple. It's all "edumacated" guesses, but perhaps Apple and Google are giving each other discounts, high-level bartering.

I thought it was a line item on Apple's services revenue reporting? My understanding is it's not a set lump sum, but is based on referrals, tallied up using whatever procurement agreement they have, and then that's the total as seen in the Apple financials reporting.

gatorguy · June 29, 2021 8:25PM

StrangeDays said:

gatorguy said:

lkrupp said:

Not a bad deal when considering that Google pays Apple $Billions to be the default search engine on Apple products.

No one knows what Google pays Apple. It's all "edumacated" guesses, but perhaps Apple and Google are giving each other discounts, high-level bartering.

I thought it was a line item on Apple's services revenue reporting? My understanding is it's not a set lump sum, but is based on referrals, tallied up using whatever procurement agreement they have, and then that's the total as seen in the Apple financials reporting.

Not that I'm aware of, but could you point me to it if it actually is reported as a "line item"?

OctoMonkey · June 29, 2021 9:22PM

DAalseth said:

pulseimages said:

I wish Apple offered iCloud sizes bigger than 2TB.

Oddly enough I want the opposite. I have no need for 2TB, but I’m soon going to outgrow 200GB. I want a tier in the middle somewhere.

I also have no need for 2TB - I still have 4.8GB of my free 5GB available! That said, it really makes no sense to not offer more storage at a commensurately higher price. To my thinking, there should be tiers something like: 100GB, 200GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 5TB, 10TB and so on. I somebody wants to pay for 100TB, why not? Perhaps it is a contractual obligation with Google.

My biggest take from this is question why Apple is paying anybody for this service. Apple could simply build some server farms and be done paying anybody else.

gatorguy · June 29, 2021 10:19PM

OctoMonkey said:

DAalseth said:

pulseimages said:

I wish Apple offered iCloud sizes bigger than 2TB.

Oddly enough I want the opposite. I have no need for 2TB, but I’m soon going to outgrow 200GB. I want a tier in the middle somewhere.

I also have no need for 2TB - I still have 4.8GB of my free 5GB available! That said, it really makes no sense to not offer more storage at a commensurately higher price. To my thinking, there should be tiers something like: 100GB, 200GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 5TB, 10TB and so on. I somebody wants to pay for 100TB, why not? Perhaps it is a contractual obligation with Google.

My biggest take from this is question why Apple is paying anybody for this service. Apple could simply build some server farms and be done paying anybody else.

I have a 2TB cloud account now and using a little over 1TB. I could trim how much I backup and probably do with 1TB, but there's extra benefits to the 2TB including 10% rebate on any gear I buy from their store and various free perks every few months. Plus I pay by the year and not the month, getting the equivalent of two months no charge.

Considering the discounts alone the 2TB account ends up free.

fastasleep · June 30, 2021 3:51AM

pulseimages said:

I wish Apple offered iCloud sizes bigger than 2TB.

They do:

If you need more iCloud storage
After you subscribe to Apple One, you can buy more iCloud storage if you need more. With both Apple One and an iCloud storage plan, you can have up to 4TB of total iCloud storage.

fastasleep · June 30, 2021 3:55AM

OctoMonkey said:

My biggest take from this is question why Apple is paying anybody for this service. Apple could simply build some server farms and be done paying anybody else.

"simply" & "done paying anybody else" = you have no idea the scale of these operations or the effort and costs involved.

FTFA:

It isn't clear why Apple's storage on Google cloud services has increased so dramatically. However, the purchase suggests that either it is more cost-effective for Apple to buy storage than it is to build out new capacity, or Apple has grown so big so quickly that it couldn't source, build, and maintain the first-party servers in a timely fashion that is needed to store the data.

michelb76 · June 30, 2021 7:14AM

GG1 said:

Don't Apple have several data centres around the world, including a few in the US (AZ, NC)? I guess Apple outgrew them, or it's more cost efficient to have a third party (Google) handle the ever-increasing hardware needs.

It also reduces downtime by not having a single point of failure. Apple uses many more storage providers, as they should.

GeorgeBMac · June 30, 2021 1:11PM

DAalseth said:

I seem to remember some years ago Apple was trying to move off of outside storage and bring everything in house.

That likely happened after Apple was implicated in the (never quite verified) story that AWS servers contained a Chinese spy chip. At the time, Apple was running iCloud off of those servers -- and Tim Cook proclaimed that Apple security was never compromised -- which was a ridiculous claim for him to make since those servers were not under his control or observation.

I trust Apple and I find it disturbing that they are using third party services for the storage I trust them with.

Somyash · April 6, 2022 1:39PM

AppleInsider said:

Apple has dramatically increased the amount of data that it stores on Google's cloud services, suggesting that its storage needs have grown faster than it can handle with its own servers.

Credit: Google

As of May 2021, Apple was on track to spend about $300 million on Google cloud storage services in 2021, about a 50% increase year-over-year, a source told The Information.

Back in November 2020 alone, Apple increased the amount of user data it stored on Google services by about 470 petabytes, bringing the total amount of data it had on Google's cloud to more than 8 exabytes. For reference, a single exabyte is enough to record a video call that's more than 237,000 years long.

Apple now ranks as the largest corporate client of Google's cloud services. Within Google, Apple even has a name indicative at its size: Bigfoot. Back in 2018, Apple confirmed that it used Google for user data storage needs.

The data needs of Apple also far eclipse any other Google customer. Apple's 470-petabyte increase in November was about the same as the total amount of storage used by Google's second largest customer, TikTok maker ByteDance.

Apple also appears to be getting a great deal for Google cloud storage. According to cost calculators on Google's website, storing 8 exabytes of data costs about $218 million per month. Apple, again, pays Google about $300 million per year storing the same amount.

It isn't clear why Apple's storage on Google cloud services has increased so dramatically. However, the purchase suggests that either it is more cost-effective for Apple to buy storage than it is to build out new capacity, or Apple has grown so big so quickly that it couldn't source, build, and maintain the first-party servers in a timely fashion that is needed to store the data.

After Apple and ByteDance, Spotify was Google's third largest customer with about 460 petabytes of data, Twitter came in fourth with 315 petabytes, and Snapchat ranked third with about 275 petabytes.

Apple stores user iCloud data on both Amazon Web Services and Google's cloud. That data is encrypted by Apple, meaning that neither Amazon nor Google can obtain the the customer's iCloud information.

Although AWS still accounts for a lion's share of the total cloud storage market, Google has carved out a niche for itself. Apple, for example, uses a form of Google cloud storage known as object storage, which is designed to handle data needs like audio and video files, as well as documents.

Keep up with everything Apple in the weekly AppleInsider Podcast -- and get a fast news update from AppleInsider Daily. Just say, "Hey, Siri," to your HomePod mini and ask for these podcasts, and our latest HomeKit Insider episode too.If you want an ad-free main AppleInsider Podcast experience, you can support the AppleInsider podcast by subscribing for $5 per month through Apple's Podcasts app, or via Patreon if you prefer any other podcast player.

What could be the reason behind Google cloud giving such huge discounts? the commitment used discounts max goes upto 70%, while here offered discount is 88.5%. is this enterprise discount, if yes what are the criterias of these discounts

Apple is now Google's largest corporate customer for cloud storage

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