Highlights –

  • The cloud provider’s new pricing model is based on data mobility, inter-region access and multi- or dual-region storage bucket data replication.
  • The company will also raise its “Always Free Internet” egress from 1GB per month to 100GB per month.

Google Cloud’s alert for a significant price increase for several services will likely take IT leaders, especially those on the budget side, by surprise.

According to Google, the increases will provide “more flexible pricing models and options” and will come into effect from October 1, 2022. The firm believes that the new prices will give customers more choice and flexibility in paying for storage, compute, and network products.

According to Google, the move is being done to “align with how other leading cloud providers charge for similar products,” which includes beginning to charge for services that were previously free of charge.

The Price Story

The cloud provider’s new pricing model is based on data mobility, inter-region access and multi- or dual-region storage bucket data replication. An increase in all segments is on the cards, but not all.

Following are the details on how prices will be affected:

  • Multi-region nearline storage prices will rise for all regions.
  • Coldline storage in the Asia multi-region will increase.
  • Archive storage in the EU, the US, and Asia multi-regions will decrease.
  • Dual-region nearline storage is going up in EUR4, NAM4, and ASIA1 regions.
  • Dual-region coldline and archive storage in the same regions as above will go down.
  • And, for the same regions, dual-region standard storage will increase.

Add to it, all class A and B storage operations pricing will increase, there will be charges for data replication. Data reads from multi-region buckets to Google Cloud services will not be free.

The company will also raise its “Always Free Internet” egress from 1GB per month to 100GB per month.

Google cloud persistent disk adds fees, raises prices

This change may be a welcomed one for those who use Google Cloud’s persistent disk to archive instead of compute-intensive tasks: A new cheaper archive snapshot option.

Google said archive snapshots would be added in the second half of 2022, and it will enlist the same features as standard snapshots.

Network topology is not free anymore

Google Cloud Network Topology was introduced as a free service last year, but eventually, Google said it plans to charge it. Come October; it will charge USD 0.0011 per resource per hour used.

Google said that customers do get Network Intelligence Center Performance Dashboard without paying any additional cost.

Charges for cloud load balancing outbound data

GCP customers who use Cloud Load Balancing will come across a new line on their bill by October: “Outbound data processed by load balancer.” The charges are the same as of existing outbound data rule of the same type.

Earlier, outbound data processed by Google Cloud Load Balancer was for free. One will have to shell something between USD 0.008 and 0.012 per GB from October.

Google also mentioned that customers who already have contracts with floating or fixed discounts will not be charged a new rate until renewal.