Google today launched Online Cloud Import, a tool that makes it easier for developers to transfer their data from AWS’s S3 storage service and other HTTP/HTTPS servers to its own Google Cloud Storage. The service is now in limited preview and developers can sign up for it here.
The competition between Google, Microsoft, Amazon and everybody else in the cloud computing space has definitely been a boon to developers who can count on plenty of innovation and price drops in this space. Despite all the promises that there is no lock-in on any of these platforms, though, moving between services is typically a major hassle.
That’s unlikely to change anytime soon, but Online Cloud Import promises to at least make transferring data between AWS and Google’s Cloud Platform easier and faster by “using Google’s high performance network.”
Besides a basic data transfer, developers can also use the service to set up regular backups and/or transfers of any data to Google Cloud Storage. In case you don’t want to move all of your data, you can also set up filters based on file creation dates and file names.
This probably doesn’t come as a major surprise, but the tool only focuses on moving data from S3 and other servers over to Google’s platform, not the other way round.
It’s worth noting that this is obviously not Google’s first import tool, though it’s probably the most user-friendly tool the company has offered so far. For transfers under 10TB, for example, Google recommends using its gsutil command-line tool; users who need to transfer hundreds of terabytes should probably just ship hard disks to Google’s upload centers in Switzerland, Japan, India or the United States.