Apple has moved some of its iCloud services onto the Google Cloud, marking one of the most high-profile wins for Alphabet's rival to Amazon Web Services since it came under new leadership last fall.
Google has been a distant third in its race with Amazon and Microsoft's Azure as the trio vie for market share in cloud computing, but it has made strides since the appointment of industry veteran Diane Greene as head of that business in November.
Google also scored a victory with Spotify last month, when the music streaming service announced it would shift away from Amazon Web Services and move most of its services onto the Google Cloud platform.
Apple's move to Google comes as part of a broader diversification for its wide range of internet services, which include iCloud backups such as photo storage, music streaming and video downloads. Apple already uses cloud services from Amazon and Microsoft, as well as its own data centers, according to people familiar with the matter.
Apple could eventually take more of these services in-house, and it has disclosed plans to build three new data centres over the next two years, in addition to the four it already has.
As one of the world's biggest companies with rapidly growing needs for storage and computing, Apple is a prize customer for cloud service providers. Analysts suggested that it may be playing providers off of each other at a time of high competition.
Apple's move to Google also represents a rare cooperation between two companies that are locked in fierce competition in other areas of their business. However, such a dynamic is not unusual in internet infrastructure: despite having been owned by Google for two years, smarthome device maker Nest still uses Amazon Web Services for its cloud needs.
Google's cloud business has long lagged behind those of Microsoft and Amazon. A recent survey by Rightscale, a cloud management provider, found that just 6 per cent of respondents used Google's cloud infrastructure, versus 17 per cent for Microsoft and 57 per cent for Amazon.
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