Google Is Waging A Financial War Of Attrition To Win The Cloud

Google is fighting a war on multiple fronts—against Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and others—and is outspending them all in the one area that will be critical to winning the future: the cloud.

Google’s April 17 earnings report revealed that the company spent $2.35 billion on infrastructure, which for Google means its data centers and all the IT gear that go in them...How does Google’s spending on cloud infrastructure compare to its rivals? Amazon doesn’t break out what it spends solely on its cloud infrastructure, but the total value of “purchases of property and equipment, including internal-use software and website development” for all of Amazon was $1.08 billion in its most recent quarter, and Microsoft’s “additions to property and equipment” amounted to $1.73 billion...