How Google Cleaned Up Its Cloud Act
Thomas Kurian hasn’t unseated Amazon and Microsoft from the top of cloud computing, but at Google Cloud he has still done the improbable by turning profits and creating buzz for the unit inside the company.
In the months after Thomas Kurian became CEO of Google Cloud in early 2019, he made a discovery: Another Google team that oversaw the company’s centrally managed information technology services had been overcharging the cloud unit for its use of software and other computing resources, according to a former Google Cloud manager who saw the bills.
For example, Google Cloud was paying the technology group for a user interface design tool based on the cloud unit’s total number of software developers, even though only a fraction of those cloud staffers worked on product design, the person said. Kurian later discovered dozens of other instances where the technology group was gouging Google Cloud for shared services and infrastructure, the person said. In response, he renegotiated the terms of those agreements to be more favorable to Google Cloud, the person said.