Gonna Take a Lot to Drag Google Cloud Away from Africa

Fresh on the heels of its announcement about a data center region in Greece, Google Cloud is now expanding to Africa, too. (Hence our terrible Toto reference. Apologies, Toto.)

The world’s third-largest public cloud provider is a little behind the game, though — Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure already have data centers in the same region. Azure got there first, in 2019; AWS launched there in 2020. Oracle went live in Johannesburg this year.

Google Cloud will head to South Africa first, before likely expanding to other parts of the continent. Research commissioned by the company and conducted by AlphaBeta Economics indicates that South Africa is growing in importance among cloud providers. AlphaBeta found that Google Cloud’s region there will contribute more than $2 billion to the country’s gross domestic product and create more than 40,000 jobs by 2030.

Google Cloud told TechCrunch it’s looking to localize applications and services. As more governments crack down on where data may reside — and as organizations seek to protect sensitive information — end users will have more choices for doing just that.