The Key Differences Between Google Vs AWS Vs Azure Cloud

Cloud has taken the world by storm in recent years, especially during the pandemic. It empowered organizations to revolutionize the way they work, redefine their business models, and reimagine their offerings. All while becoming more cost-efficient, agile, and innovative. Courtesy to all the three top Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), namely Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Azure Cloud. However, there’s always a debate between Google Vs AWS Vs Azure Cloud and still, there’s a lot of confusion when you want to acquire cloud services from either of them. 

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have paved the way for businesses to easily migrate their workloads to the cloud. Within no time, these three tech giants dominated the public cloud ecosystem by providing flexible, reliable, and secure cloud services. Now, there is a fierce three-way battle among AWS, GCP, and Azure to lead the pack. They are going the extra mile by doling out a wide range of cloud computing, storage, and networking services. There’s not a day that goes by without one of these three top cloud service providers rolling out new features and updates. This high competition between Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure is making it tough for businesses to choose their cloud platform.  

Cognizant of this delicate challenge, we have brought to you this exclusive blog on Google Cloud vs AWS vs Azure to help you choose the one that best suits your business requirements.  

Azure Vs AWS Vs Google Cloud: Choosing the Right Cloud Platform 

Before we delve into the detailed comparison of Azure, GCP, and AWS cloud, let’s understand each cloud platform.  

What is Amazon Web Services (AWS)? 

Amazon, the pioneer of cloud computing, entered the market with its flagship cloud offering Amazon Web Services (AWS) over a decade ago. Since then, the AWS cloud has been dominating the public cloud infrastructure market in terms of the number of products as well as customers.  

The Aws cloud offers more than 200 cloud products and solutions for a host of applications, technologies, and industries. Some of the top featured offerings included in Amazon’s cloud service are Amazon EC2, Amazon Aurora, Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Amazon RDS, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon VPC, AWS Lambda, Amazon SageMaker, and Amazon Lightsail.  

“Amazon’s cloud service” has the most extensive global network. Its data centers are spread across 84 Availability Zones within 26 geographic regions worldwide. This extensive infrastructure brings the benefits of low latency, highly redundant, and highly efficient networking. Moreover, Amazon is planning for 24 more Availability Zones and 8 Regions.  

What is Microsoft Azure Cloud? 

Azure Cloud, offered by the tech giant Microsoft, is the second-largest cloud platform in the market. Microsoft’s commitment to the highest levels of security and privacy, backed by 90+ compliance offerings, has made Azure the most trusted cloud platform. The flexible pay-as-you-go pricing option helped this cloud service of Microsoft to raise the bar alongside AWS.  

Microsoft Azure cloud offers more than 200 cloud products and services. Some of the most popular Azure cloud offerings are Virtual Machines, Azure Virtual Desktop, Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Cognitive Services, Azure Functions, and Azure Arc.  

The cloud service of Microsoft also has full-fledged networking capabilities. Azure supports multiple site-to-site connections to virtual networks. It also has the ability to connect virtual networks across various regions to each other. With more than 60 global regions, Azure gives customers the flexibility to deploy applications at any time and from anywhere. 

What is the Google Cloud Platform (GCP)? 

As its name suggests, GCP is offered by the tech giant Google. The intuitive interface, affordability, and wide range of compute options made its cloud service of Google an enticing alternative to Amazon Cloud and Azure Cloud. The IT leader leverages full-scale encryption for its cloud computing data and communication channels.  

The cloud service of Google offers over 100 cloud products. Some of the most featured products, include Compute Engine, Cloud SDK, Cloud Storage, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud SQL, Cloud CDN, BigQuery, Cloud Run, Dataflow, and Anthos. The Google Cloud also provides tailor-made APIs related to computer vision, natural language processing, and translation.  

Google Cloud’s network of data centers is spread across the world in 200+ countries and territories. With more than 34 regions, GCP has 103 availability zones and 147 network edge locations.   

Azure vs AWS vs Google Cloud: A Detailed Comparison 

Now, let us understand the key differences between Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure, based on their features and offerings, among other factors: 

• Google Vs AWS vs Azure: Compute 

Computing is the fundamental role of a computer. All the services related to computing workloads come under computing. In terms of computing, the cloud platform that has the ability to scale thousands of nodes in a matter of minutes is considered to be the most effective.  

Amazon’s main computing services offering is its EC2 instances, which are easily customized as per the customer’s needs. The AWS cloud also offers some related services, including the EC2 Container Service, Elastic Beanstalk, AWS Lambda, ECS for Kubernetes (EKS), and Autoscaling. 

On the other hand, Azure’s computing service is offered through Virtual Machines (VMs). The related services are Cloud Services, Resource Manager, and Azure Autoscaling.  

Likewise, the Google Cloud offers computing services through the Compute Engine. This scalable Compute Engine is easy to boot and comes with significant disk storage, performance, and customization.  

Compute Service	GCP	AWS	Azure
VM (Compute Instance)	Google Compute Engine	Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)	Azure Virtual Machine
PaaS	Google App Engine	AWS Elastic Beanstalk	App Service
Container	Google Kubernetes Engine	AWS Elastic Container/Kubernetes Service	Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Serverless Functions	Google Cloud Functions	AWS Lambda	Azure Function

•  Google Vs AWS vs Azure: Storage 

Storage is one of the most significant deciding factors when selecting a cloud platform. The services of the storage domain are related to data storage. Amazon’s S3 is the most sought-after storage service in the market. Google Cloud and Azure are also offering reliable storage services. The differences between the storage services provided by the three clouds are below: 

Storage Services	GCP	AWS	Azure
Object Storage	Google Cloud Storage	Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)	Block Blob Storage
Virtual Server Disks	Google Compute Engine Persistent Disks	Amazon Elastic Block Store	Managed Disks
Cold Storage	Google Cloud Storage Nearline	Amazon Glacier	Azure Archive Blob Storage
File Storage	ZFS/Avere	Amazon Elastic File System	Azure File Storage

•  Google Vs AWS vs Azure: Database 

A wide range of database services is offered by all three major cloud providers. AWS provides Relational Database Service (RDS, which supports major databases such as Oracle and PostgreSQL. On the other hand, Azure supports big data and both the NoSQL and relational databases. Likewise, Google Cloud provides Cloud SQL.  

Database Services	GCP	AWS	Azure
RDBMS	Google Cloud SQL	Amazon Relational Database Service	SQL Database
NoSQL: Key–Value	Google Cloud Bigtable	Amazon DynamoDB	Table Storage
NoSQL: Indexed	Google Cloud Datastore	Amazon SimpleDB	Azure Cosmos DB
Data Warehouse/Data Lake	Google BigQuery	Amazon Redshift	Azure Synapse Analytics

•  Google Vs AWS vs Azure: Networking and Content Delivery 

Amazon, Google, and Azure provide excellent networking and content delivery services, with automated server load balancing and connectivity to on-premises systems. Each platform offers a different network. While Azure’s network is the Virtual Network (Vnet), Amazon’s network is the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), and Google’s network is the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). 

Network and Content Delivery Services	GCP	AWS	Azure
Virtual Network	Virtual Private Cloud	Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)	Virtual Networks (VNets)
Elastic Load Balancer	Google Cloud Load Balancing	Elastic Load Balancer	Azure Load Balancer
Peering	Google Cloud Interconnect	Direct Connect	ExpressRoute
DNS	Google Cloud DNS	Amazon Route 53	Azure DNS
Content Delivery Networks	Cloud Interconnect	CloudFront	Content Delivery Network
Cross-premises Connectivity	Cloud VPN	API Gateway	VPN Gateway

•   Google Vs AWS vs Azure: Management and Monitoring 

Cloud management and monitoring services empower users to handle their cloud environments with ease. With these services, users can gain insights into cloud performance, health, and utilization. Users can manage cloud functions like billing, traceability, and code management.  

Management & Monitoring Services	GCP	AWS	Azure
Billing	Cloud Billing API	Billing API	Billing API
Administration	Cloud Console	Application Discovery Service   Systems Manager Personal   Health Dashboard	Resource Health Storage Explorer  Log Analytics  Operations Management Suite
Resource Management & Monitoring	Stackdriver Monitoring   CloudShell   Debugger   Trace   Error Reporting	CloudWatch   X-Ray   Management Console	Azure Portal   Monitor  Application Insights
Deployment and DevOps	Cloud Deployment Manager	OpsWorks CloudFormation	Automation   Resource Manager VM Extensions
Cloud Advisor Capabilities	Cloud Compliance	AWS Trusted Advisor	Azure Advisor

•  Google Vs AWS vs Azure: Development Tools 

Cloud deployment tools are leveraged for building, deploying, running, and managing applications on the cloud. These tools are also used for diagnosing and debugging cloud applications.  

AWS offers around 20 Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Internet of Things (IoT) tools to help its customers deploy cloud apps with ease. It also offers two serverless tools, AWS Lambda and AWS Fargate.  

On the other hand, the cloud service of Microsoft is also offering AI-based deployment tools. However, when it comes to serverless, Azure offers only one tool – Azure Functions. With Azure Functions, users can easily create, manage, and achieve complex workflows.  

Likewise, the cloud service of Google which is using AI and ML for what is called the largest search engine is leading the pack in offering AI-based cloud deployment tools. If you are looking for full-fledged AI and ML, then GCP is the right choice.  

Development Tools	GCP	AWS	Azure
App Testing	Cloud Test Lab	Device Farm	DevTest Labs
DevOps	Google Cloud Deploy  Cloud Build	AWS CodeBuild   AWS CodeDeploy   AWS CodePipeline	Visual Studio Team Services  Azure DevOps  Github   Enterprise
Git Repositories	Cloud Source Repositories	AWS Source Repositories	Azure Source Repositories
Media Transcoding	Transcoder API	Elastic Transcoder	Media Services

• Google Vs AWS vs Azure: Security 

Security is the foundation for cloud adoption. Proactively safeguarding the business assets and streamlining compliance with all the relevant regulatory standards is a must to leverage the full potential of the cloud. Without proper security protocols in place, your cloud may brew up a potential security storm within no time.  

In a bid to gain an edge in the market, Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS are regularly updating their security and compliance protocols to fortify their cloud network security.  

Amazon Web Services is the most mature cloud platform. AWS cloud security offers account isolation through security groups (firewalls) & granular IAM, vulnerability assessment through AWS Inspector, and API activity monitoring and threat intelligence through Guard Duty. 

Likewise, the cloud service of Microsoft, i.e., the Azure Cloud offers a multilayered security shield across on-premises data centers, cloud infrastructure, and operations. Microsoft Defender for Cloud empowers businesses to stay secure against evolving threats across multi-cloud and hybrid environments. With deep insights from industry-leading security research, cloud customers can quickly identify vulnerabilities and secure their critical workloads across VMs, containers, databases, storage, app services, and more. 

Meanwhile, Google Cloud is also competing strongly with AWS and Azure by offering a wide variety of security products and solutions. Google’s security-by-default infrastructure is leveraged for protecting the cloud network and data. Web App and API Protection (WAAP) enables cloud users to protect their applications and APIs against security threats and data breaches.  

Security Services	GCP	AWS	Azure
Identity Management	Cloud Identity	Cognito	Active Directory B2C
Authentication & Authorization	Cloud IAM  Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy	Identity and Access Management (IAM)	Active Directory  Active Directory Premium
Data Encryption	Cloud Key Management	Key Management Service	Storage Service Encryption
Firewall	GCP Firewall	Web Application Firewall	Application Gateway
Cloud Protection	Advanced Protection Program	AWS shield	DDoS Protection Service

• Google Vs AWS vs Azure: Market Share 

Establishing itself as the pioneer in the cloud infrastructure market, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is still leading the pack in 2022. AWS’s market share in the global cloud infrastructure market stood at 33 percent in the first quarter of 2022. This share is more than the combined market share of Azure Cloud and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). 

While Azure Cloud accounted for 22 percent of the global cloud infrastructure market, Google Cloud accounted for 10% of the market share.  

• Google Vs AWS vs Azure: Pricing Structure 

Pricing is the prime deciding factor when choosing a cloud platform. All three cloud providers are offering enticing pricing models and discounts. However, all three are providing pay-as-you-go and pay-per-minute/second pricing models.  

In the case of amazon’s cloud service, cloud users get to explore more than 100 products at no cost for 12 months with the Free Tier offer. The free tier offer is available for all AWS customers and does not expire. Moreover, users can get volume-based discounts, meaning the more you use the less you pay.  

Whereas, in the case of cloud service of Microsoft, the users can build on Azure with 12 months of select free services and get USD 200 in Azure credits to explore other Azure services for the first 30 days of signing up. With the pay-as-you-go pricing model, Azure customers can maintain their Azure free account without any upfront commitment. Users can cancel their accounts anytime. 

With the cloud service of google, new cloud customers are offered 300 free credits to build, deploy, and run their workloads on the cloud. In addition, users can leverage over 20 products for free with almost monthly usage limits. You can also pay in advance for resources at discounted prices. There are no upfront fees and termination charges.  

Machine Type/Pricing Structure	AWS	Azure	GCP
Smallest Instance	2 virtual CPUs and 8 GB of RAM cost around USD 69 per month	2 virtual CPUs and 8 GB of RAM cost around USD 70 per month	2 virtual CPUs and 8 GB of RAM cost around USD 52 per month
Largest Instance	The largest instance offered by AWS includes 128 virtual CPUs and 3.84 TB of RAM. It costs around USD 3.97 per hour	The largest instance offered by Azure includes 128 virtual CPUs and 3.89 TB of RAM. It costs around USD 6.79 per hour	The largest instance offered by GCP includes 160 virtual CPUs and 3.75 TB of RAM. It costs around USD 5.32 per hour

Azure vs AWS vs Google Cloud: Which One to Choose? 

After going through the detailed comparison between Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS, it is quite obvious that all three are unique in their own way and are offering enticing benefits to the customers. Though AWS is dominating the public cloud ecosystem, Azure and Google Cloud are not far behind. So, with each cloud provider having its own set of strengths, it is no more about choosing ‘the best’ cloud platform, rather it’s about choosing the one ‘that best suits your business needs.  

Conclusion 

Choosing a cloud platform that best suits your business requirements is easier said than done. Migrating to the cloud in a haste can trigger dire consequences for the business. According to a recent report, 72% of enterprises had to bring the applications back to on-premises after migrating them to the cloud in haste. To avoid this costly outcome, it’s wise to rope in a cloud expert, like Continuum Innovations, before climbing to the cloud.  

Continuum Innovations brings in deep industry experience and domain expertise to help you choose the cloud platform that best aligns with your business objectives and requirements. By looking more deeply into your business, our cloud experts bring robust cloud strategies to life in unexpected ways. Whether you are moving to AWS or Azure or Google Cloud, we have the capabilities to help you cloud with confidence.  

Partner with Continuum Innovations and Be on Cloud Nine!