Google’s endeavor to improve infrastructure has not been concluded even after three years of the company’s investment of $30 billion as they continue to pursue higher limits of increased connectivity. As of today, they announced the addition of three new undersea submarine cables and five new Cloud Platform regions.
The Netherlands and Montreal regions await their opening in the first quarter of 2018, closely followed by Los Angeles, Finland, and Hong Kong. The commission of three cables in 2019 includes the Curie, connecting Chile to Los Angeles, HK-G connecting Hong Kong to Guam, interconnecting major subsea communication hubs in Asia, and Havfrue, a consortium cable connecting the USA to Denmark and Ireland.
Google’s cloud service attracts investments for constant improvements of their network, with some accounts contributing up to 25% of internet traffic. These investments aim at improving connectivity and expanding Google’s Cloud services reach, having companies like PayPal depend on them to successfully execute their business ventures. Shri Shivananda, PayPal’s Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, had commented that the billions of transactions across the globe must be done “securely, instantaneously and economically”, thereby rendering security, networking, and infrastructure as key considerations when choosing a cloud provider. He added, “With Google Cloud, we have access to the world’s largest network, which helps us reach our infrastructure goals and best serve our millions of users.”
Direct investments include 11 cables, inclusive of upcoming projects, and the five new regions will be added to the list of 13 existing ones. This is not the first instance of the undersea cable initiative by any global technology company. Microsoft and Facebook have worked together to construct a massive oversea data cable called Marea, which was completed in late 2017 and connects Virginia Beach in the US to Bilbao in Spain.
Curie cable:
This cable, named after renowned scientist Marie Curie, aims at improving global infrastructure, with Google being the first major non-telecom company to build a private cable stretching across continents. This endeavor dates back to 2008, when they became the first technology-based company to invest in a subsea cable as part of a consortium. The control of the design and construction processes would enable them to define the cable’s specifications, streamline deployment and ensure fast delivery of service to customers. After the deployments, routing decisions that optimize for latency and availability will be made. Curie will be a landmark establishment, being the first subsea cable in Chile after almost 20 years and will be the largest single data pipe, serving Google users in Latin America.
Havfrue cable:
For the North Atlantic region, the Havfrue cable, Danish for a mermaid, shall connect the USA to Denmark and Ireland. To increase capacity and resilience, Google has been working with Facebook, Aqua Comms, and Bulk Infrastructure and will be built by TE SubCom and is expected to be out by the end of 2019.
HK-G cable:
For the Pacific region, Google is working with RTI-C and NEC for the subsea cable that would join Hong Kong to Guam. Along with Indigo amidst other subsea systems, this cable would create several scalable, diverse paths to Australia, increasing a stronghold in the Pacific. Customers are assured of improved capacity and latency from Australia to major hubs in Asia, increasing their network capacity in the newly added Hong Kong region.
The installations of the new submarine cables enable expansions in Google’s existing cloud network. They have over 100 points of presence and more than 7,500 edge caching nodes. This ensures faster and more secure connectivity for all users. Delivery products such as Machine Learning Engine, Spanner, BigQuery and other Google Cloud Platform and G Suite services would not be possible to be delivered without the Google network. This whole system is meant for Google Cloud customers who must be able to avail the same network infrastructure that powers its own services, upholding the reputation of providing speed, capacity, and reliability that Google upholds globally.
