Google announced this week that a VMWare founder was taking charge of its cloud computing business as it looks to close ground on rivals such as Amazon and Microsoft.
Diane Greene, who was already on the board of directors at Alphabet-owned Google, will lead a new team combining Google for Work, Cloud Platform, Google Apps and other services hosted in the Internet cloud.
“This new business will bring together product, engineering, marketing and sales, and allow us to operate in a much more integrated, coordinated fashion,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post. “Cloud computing is revolutionizing the way people live and work, and there is no better person to lead this important area.”
Google has also signed a deal to buy Greene’s startup Bebop, which specializes in building and maintaining business applications in the cloud. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
“With these announcements, we’re excited to take the next step in helping businesses take advantage of the cloud to work better, operate more securely, run more efficiently and grow faster,” Pichai said.
Amazon is widely known for its prowess as an online retail colossus, but it is also thriving when it comes to sending business aloft in the Internet cloud. Earlier this week, Urs Hölzle, the eighth employee in the company’s history, said that Google’s Cloud Platform revenues could surpass Google’s advertising revenue.
Speaking at the Structure conference, Hölzle said, “The goal is for us to talk about Google as a cloud company by 2020. … Our cloud growth rate is probably industry-leading.”
Copyright Agence-France Presse, 2015
