Google announce improvements to Cloud IaaS and PaaS

Among many announcements at Google I/O last night in San Francisco, Urs Golzle introduced improvements to Google’s PaaS and IaaS offerings – with PHP support in App Engine and taking Compute Engine out of a limited preview and opening it up to all developers, as well as other technical improvements. Google also announced Cloud Datastore, a cloud storage service to directly compete with Amazon S3.

By opening up infrastructure, Google are attempting to emulate the success of both Amazon and Microsoft with their cloud offerings, which generate billions of dollars for both companies.

Whether Google can make up ground on the market leaders remains to be seen, however, the reward for doing so is massive, and will ultimately benefit consumers by driving down prices.