Google Cloud cuts egress fees, something competitors charge a premium for

Google Cloud customers wanting to migrate their data to another cloud or on-premises environment no longer have to pay to do so. The tech giant is discontinuing its so-called ‘cloud egress fees’, effective immediately. It’s something Google Cloud’s competitors charge a premium for.

According to Google Cloud, the decision to stop such fees in its licenses is the result of revised policies. By putting an end to these fees, the hyperscaler aims to end previously “restrictive licensing terms” for customers. These may have left customers in a vendor lock-in situation. Such practices severely restrict end-user agency and choice.

The competition still charges such egress costs. Back in September 2023, Google already took the first step to make a cloud egress free. Customers within the Standard Tier, which uses the public Internet for data transfer, have since been able to transfer 200 GB of data to another provider or on-premises environment for free every month.

In addition, the elimination of fees for exiting Google Cloud should ensure greater interoperability between different providers, as well as on-premises environments, for example.

Other reasons

Another reason may be that Google Cloud wants to use this, among other things, to pre-empt stricter competition regulations.

Google Cloud, like other large cloud providers, is already under the microscope of various regulators. These include the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the European Commission for restrictive conditions. High fees for exiting a cloud platform would logically fall among them.

Conditions

The new Google Cloud policy does include some conditions. First, it is reserved for customers in the Premium Tier Network Service Tier. However, that is the standard network tier on offer.

In addition, it only covers data located in the data storage and data management solutions in Google Cloud.

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Customers may not want to transfer all data workloads to another cloud or on-premises environment. However, partial or occasional data transfers from Google Cloud to other environments are still subject to fees. These fees can be between eight and 12 cents per TB of data.

Furthermore, one of the requirements is that a request for data egress must be submitted before the existing contract with Google Cloud expires. Finally, Google has the right to monitor the data transfer for compliance requirements.