Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Google Cloud Platform is currently the third most utilized cloud service, with around a 10% share of the global cloud infrastructure market. GCP offers roughly the same data storage capacity and virtual machine functionality as most other cloud providers (including AWS and Azure), but GCP’s strength lies in its data processing tools as well as its AI and machine learning capabilities.

As a Platform as a Service (PaaS) tool, Google App Engine was introduced in April 2008 to enable developers to create and host apps on Google’s infrastructure. In September 2011, App Engine was released from preview, and the name Google Cloud Platform was adopted in 2013. Google has now made a number of supplementary tools available, including its data storage layer and its Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) component known as the Google Compute Engine, which facilitates the use of virtual machines. Google has expanded its IaaS offering to include load balancers, DNS, monitoring tools and data analysis services.