Google is adding twelve regions to its Cloud Platform during the next two years, building it into more of a competitor to Amazon Web Services. The regions will be served from data centers, evidently including a new one in Tokyo Japan.

In public cloud services, regions are geographic areas with their own data center resources: Google has promised two new regions in 2016, one in the US West - served from Oregon, where the company has an expanding footprint - and the other in Tokyo Japan. As Google has not yet announced a data center location in Japan, this must be a new one. Another ten regions will follow in 2017, served from existing or new sites.

google cloud platform world lead
– Google / DCD

Expansion

“We’re adding to this global network for Cloud Platform customers by expanding our roster of existing Cloud Platform regions with two more — both operational later this year,” said cloud product manager Varun Sakalkar in a blog announcement. Each region will have multiple availability zones - different local data center resources linked through low latency links for reliability. 

Google already has an established site in The Dalles, Oregon, and announced plans to expand this with another 23 acres last year.  

Meanwhile, Google has been expanding in Asia, with data centers in Taiwan and Singapore. A new region in Japan will require a data center there. 

Google is still playing catch-up with Amazon, of course. While Google currently has four regions (Central US, Eastern US, Western Europe and Asia), the AWS public cloud already has 12 regions and a plan for five more. So by the time Google reaches its announced 14 regions, AWS should have around 17.