Google Cloud expands to six more countries

Google today announced its plans for a major expansion of its physical Google Cloud infrastructure. The company plans to launch new Google Cloud regions in six new countries: Austria, Czech Republic, Greece, Norway, South Africa and Sweden. That’s on top of the regions in Milan, Paris, Madrid, Columbus and Dallas the company already announced and plans to bring online in 2023.

With these six new regions, Google Cloud’s footprint will expand to 41 regions. And maybe that’s no surprise. As more countries (and regions) get serious about data sovereignty, all of the major cloud providers will have to offer local regions in order to be competitive — and the software tools and controls to ensure that data stays in those regions, too. And while Google Cloud was notoriously slow to expand beyond its first core regions at first, the company has invested heavily in new data centers and the infrastructure to connect them in recent years.