Google Compute Engine Expands Cloud Competition

Google expanded access to Compute Engine in 2012, offering virtual machines on the same broad infrastructure family that supported Google’s own services. The product put Google in more direct competition with Amazon EC2.

Virtual machines gave customers much more control than App Engine. They could choose operating-system images, install arbitrary server software, configure disks, and manage networks. The trade-off was that users also inherited more responsibility for patching and operating those machines.

Compute Engine represented Google’s recognition that cloud customers wanted several abstraction levels. Some applications fit a highly managed platform; others required full virtual servers. Modern cloud platforms now offer everything from raw VMs to containers, managed databases, and serverless functions because no single level of control fits every workload.