Inside Google’s strategic move to eliminate customer cloud data transfer fees

On the other hand, analysts also say that Google’s move to waive of egress charges should bode well for enterprise customers.

“There’s been a huge customer backlash across all cloud computing companies on account of the egregiously priced egress fees. It’s gotten to the point that customers don’t want to move to a new provider because of the fees,” Maribel Lopez of Lopez Research, said, adding that she saw these fees as a mechanism for locking in enterprises.

Further, Futurum Group’s Dickens believes that the fees waiver aligns the broader industry’s move towards reducing or eliminating data egress fees, as seen with the formation of the Bandwidth Alliance in 2018, which includes several major cloud providers committed to reducing these costs. 

Although, the idea of the egress fee waiver sounds welcoming, a deeper look into the frequently asked questions (FAQs) section of the announcement may make some enterprises see red.

Firstly, any enterprise that wants to avail the data transfer fees waiver has to end its relationship with Google Cloud and all of its services.

Secondly, the waiver will be applicable as long as any enterprise customer is moving all its data out of Google Cloud “within 60 days of eligibility approval” and terminating its contract.

Moreover, there is a need for an application to be submitted for a case-by-case review of the Google Cloud team in order to process the fees waiver. The steps can be found here.

“The Google Cloud Support team will review the request and notify you of when you may initiate the migration of all your workloads and data from Google Cloud to another cloud service provider or an on-premises data center for free in anticipation of terminating your Google Cloud agreement,” the company wrote in a post.

The FAQs also mention that only data stored as part of these service — BigQuery, Cloud Bigtable, Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, Datastore, Filestore, Spanner, and Persistent Disk — are eligible for free transfer.