Google claims to be 'fastest growing' public cloud provider as revenue rockets

Google's cloud division has had its first billion dollar financial quarter, with the search giant claiming it is the fastest growing public cloud service provider around.

That's a bold claim given Amazon Web Services saw a hefty hike in cloud revenues at the end of its fourth quarter financial results. But in the fourth quarter and end-of-year 2017 financial results for Google's parent company Alphabet reported cloud revenues in excess of $1bn for the fourth quarter.

"Google Cloud, which includes Google Cloud Platform and G Suite, has reached meaningful scale, and I'm excited to share today that it's already a billion dollar per quarter business," said Google's chief executive Sundar Pichai.

"In fact, we believe that Google Cloud Platform, based on publicly reported data for the twelve months ended December 2017, is the fastest growing major public cloud provider in the world."

And that growth is set to continue if Pichai's claims on an earning call are to be believed: "We are also increasingly doing larger, more strategic deals with customers. In fact, the number of deals worth over $1 million across all Cloud products more than tripled from 2016 to 2017."

Fuelling that grow are the four million paying customers on Google's cloud-powered G Suite.

However, while Google may be the fastest growing provider of public cloud services, it is some way off being the largest. AWS raked in excess of $5bn for its fourth financial quarter, and

Microsoft's Azure cloud revenue shot up by 98% to help generate $7.8bn for Redmond's 'Intelligent Cloud' group.

Nevertheless, the the solid performance in cloud revenues of the three largest public cloud suppliers is indicative of a very healthy and rising demand for cloud infrastructure and cloud-based services, ranging from productivity tools in the form of software-as-a-service to developer tools and platforms.