Google cloud lets customers park their data in Europe
Cloud developers and users of Google services can now guarantee that their data is being processed within EU borders.
The update was announced on Monday along with a range of other improvements to the company's cloud services.
"Now, customers using Google App Engine, Google Cloud Storage, Google Cloud SQL and (soon) Google Compute Engine can deploy their applications, data and virtual machines to European datacentres," the company wrote in a blog post. "This helps bring your solutions even closer to your customers for faster performance and enables international redundancy."
Google will not let customers select exactly where in Europe their data will be stored, potentially locking out customers who must keep their data within the legislative bounds of their country.
Other cloud companies have also tussled with this problem - Amazon Web Services has an Irish datacentre hub and several edge locations across Europe. Microsoft lets users put their data in two European datacentre hubs: Ireland and the Netherlands. However, the company does have the ability to "transfer customer data within a major geographic region for data redundancy or other purposes", Microsoft says.
Though Europe has lagged behind the US in cloud uptake, Google says that European datacentres from big cloud providers may boost overall European cloud consumption.
"I think that the fact we're offering the extended European datacentres has in a way boosted the adoption of cloud in Europe," Barak Regev, head of Google's Cloud Platform in EMEA, told ZDNet. "Making all of our services available through EU datacentres will accelerate that even further."