Google Cloud vs. AWS: Choosing the Right Platform

As cloud computing continues to find its way into many big and small organizations, the choice of the right cloud computing solution has become a talking point for specialists and business owners alike. Among public cloud providers, Amazon Web Services (AWS) seems to have the lead in the competition, with Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure close behind.

In this article, we compare the two leading cloud computing services – Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Google Cloud’s Google Compute Engine (GCE) – on the basis of their performance, cost, features, services, and the overall advantages and disadvantages of these two cloud computing platforms. Beyond helping you choose the right Internet as a Service (IaaS) platform, we hope this comparison also helps the eager professionals among you understand where you would have to focus your learning efforts.

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Some Striking Contrasts Between EC2 & GCE

AWS has been the cloud computing market-leader for the past seven years. Available in more zones and regions than Google Cloud, licensed users are assured of minimal impact of outages. In addition, AWS boasts a wide array of services, many of which -such as the Simple Email Service and the CloudFront content delivery network- are not available in GCE.

AWS also offers micro-Windows instances as part of its Free Usage Tier, whereas support for Windows workloads is not a part of GCE’s offerings. As Jillian Mirandi, a tech analyst points out, “AWS has a more complete, enterprise-grade portfolio”.

AWS also customizes its networking equipment, the corresponding protocols that travel over it to boost network performance, and also has its own fiber-optic network between zones. Google’s edge in network performance is not perceived to last long.

Now for some noteworthy advancements made by Google Cloud’s GCE.

GCE’s impressive network performance is something to note. It is largely because Google’s network traffic passes through its own fiber network rather than traversing the public internet. Each GCE instance is also attached to a single network that spans all regions without VPNs or gateways as middlemen.

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However, the choice of the right platform does depend upon the needs of the enterprise.

So – how do these two measure up?