Google Cloud infrastructure services and pricing update

This is a general FAQ about changes to infrastructure services and pricing for Google Cloud. We plan to update this FAQ regularly, so please check back for the latest information.

Important note: Customers under existing contracts as of October 1, 2022 with a floating or fixed discount will remain unaffected by the changes until their contract renewal. However, we want to provide information to support our customers who may have questions about the new offerings and pricing.

Based on feedback from our customers, we are implementing the changes in two parts over a six-month period. On October 1, 2022, we updated our pricing as previously planned for new products / SKUs in the areas of Cloud Storage, Load Balancing, and Cloud Ops Monitoring.

On April 1, 2023, we implemented pricing updates on existing products in these areas as well as Persistent Disk SKU and pricing changes, having given customers nearly an additional six months to prepare for these changes.

FAQ

How do I know if the products I am using are impacted by pricing changes?

This change impacts both existing and new products, but at different timeframes. Take a moment to review the announcements for each product below:

a. Persistent Disk snapshot pricing changes

b. Cloud Storage pricing changes

c. Load Balancing pricing changes

d. Cloud Ops Monitoring pricing changes

How can I find information on my usage of Google Cloud products?

Take a few steps to review your current usage for Google Cloud products.

1. On September 15, 2022, we sent an email containing our latest updates on these pricing changes. Look for the subject line: [Billing Notice] Reminder about upcoming price changes to some of your Google Cloud services.

a. If you have the email: An estimate for your current usage will be attached. This estimate includes existing SKUs and the new SKUs that we introduced.

b. If you can’t find the email: You can still estimate your costs for existing SKUs that are changing in price. You can also access usage information for new SKUs in your billing report, including SKUs launched on Oct. 1, 2022.

i. View which SKUs are changing for the product you are interested in.

c. For existing Cloud Storage, Persistent Disk, and Load Balancing SKUs

Browse to the Billing Reports page or the Cost Table page in the Cloud Console.
Change the Group by filter to SKU, and apply filters to the data based on what timeline you would like to use to estimate.
Using the SKUs from the estimate or pricing page, use the SKUs filter to view usage for each product’s relevant SKUs in turn. Use the SKU name or ID in the filter to view current usage, then calculate the new cost using the usage in the “Usage” column.

d. For Cloud Ops Monitoring

Charges for Cloud Ops Monitoring are based on usage. Cost estimates are provided in the email.

How do I prepare for changes in products?

Once you have identified which products you are using, and calculated new cost estimates for any SKUs you are using, you can then prepare for these changes for Persistent Disk, Cloud Storage, and Load Balancing following the steps below:

For Persistent Disk snapshots, look at each application using snapshots to see if the move to the new archive class option makes sense for your organization. The new snapshots are managed consistently with the current snapshot, so changing the configuration to use the new tier for future snapshots is straightforward. If your snapshots are retained for 90 days or longer, and if they are rarely accessed, we recommend creating Archive Snapshots. If you don’t require the additional replication and resilience of multi-regional snapshots, we recommend using regional Snapshots by specifying a regional location when snapshots are created. Read about storage options.
For Cloud Storage, Read about Location considerations.

Decide if you will continue to use current multi-regional storage buckets, or if moving data to a regional or dual-region location makes more sense for your organization.
Store short-lived data in regional locations.
Verify that your compute and storage resources are co-located in the same region.
Decide if you want to use Storage Transfer Service to migrate data.

For Load Balancing, decide if Cloud CDN or Google Cloud Armor will help to reduce data processed for your specific needs. Read about steps you can take to reduce outbound load balancer data.
For Cloud Ops Monitoring,

Review your configured uptime checks.
Make sure to keep the uptime checks you need.
Delete unnecessary or outdated uptime checks. You can view the list of uptime checks under Cloud Ops > Monitoring > Uptime checks.

Why are we making these changes?

Over the past several years, we’ve made significant investments in infrastructure services that have benefited our customers. Many of these changes have added capabilities for new use cases and applications—such as new flexible options in Cloud Storage, data mobility, Persistent Disk snapshots, network load balancing, and part of the Network Intelligence Center.

As we continue to add these capabilities, we are also making adjustments to certain products' pricing models to address customer feedback on how they want to purchase our services. As more companies move to a multicloud approach, we believe this approach can make it easier for customers to manage payments across multiple providers and streamline their procurement.

What is our pricing philosophy?

Google Cloud offers innovative solutions to transform businesses, priced in a customer-focused and consistent way. With our pay-as-you-go pricing structure, customers have the ability to better match costs to the services they use. Customers can also more easily compare services between leading cloud providers.

What services are affected by the price changes?

We are changing our offerings (and, in some cases, prices) for certain Google Cloud infrastructure services. These changes include services in Cloud Storage, Networking, Security, Cloud Monitoring, and the Persistent Disk offering that is part of our Compute service. The changes can provide customers with new ways to optimize their spending based on workload type and size, as well as their data portability needs. They also enable customers to reduce prices on some services. A high-level summary of the changes include:

Changes in the way customers are charged for data mobility with Cloud Storage, including replication of data written to a dual- or multi-region storage bucket, and inter-region data access.
Introduction of a new, lower-cost archive snapshot option for Persistent Disk customers who have infrequent data access needs or are backing up data. This option complements the existing Standard Storage class snapshots that can be well suited for cloning and test/development use cases. The new Archive Storage class is lower priced than the current Standard Storage class, and the current Standard Storage class will have a small premium added.
We will begin charging customers using our load balancing product for outbound traffic data processing, not just inbound.
We are improving Cloud Monitoring’s Uptime check feature by adding more capabilities and functionality (such as private uptime check), investing in the reliability and scalability of the service, and aligning it to other cloud operations solutions. We will also start charging for the service.

What can customers do to address these changes?

Customers can adapt their current usage to better align their applications to these new business models and help mitigate some of the price changes. They should consider what actions, if any, they may want to take based on current storage, networking, and compute needs. Many of these changes may have simple choices associated with them.

What new flexible options are available for customers?

As Google Cloud has grown, we’ve learned that customers are looking to build their infrastructure with products that provide flexibility to meet performance, cost, and availability needs. With these changes, we are introducing new ways for customers to customize product options to meet their use case needs. For some products, these new ways may mean adding new features or granular controls. For other products, the new options may mean changing how we bill for its usage.

We’re introducing new flexibility in the following areas:

Persistent Disk snapshot options: Persistent Disk will now offer a range of offerings and price points based on customer use case, instead of a single flat rate. Customers with long-term backup use cases for their snapshots can use new archive snapshot SKUs, priced lower than Persistent Disk snapshots today. We will continue to offer a premium multi-region snapshot option for customers who need much higher resilience.
Changes to the way we charge for data mobility: Previously, a large number of storage customers used our multi-region storage as a default option to achieve high availability and cross-region replication. With the new product changes, customers can achieve better performance with dual-region storage by creating dual regions in many new locations and/or choosing to add on capabilities like turbo replication (for an additional cost). Regions and dual regions may be better aligned for analytical and general-purpose enterprise workloads than multi-region locations, as they can allow customers to co-locate compute with storage for higher performance.

When do the price changes take effect?

The initial services and pricing updates went into effect on October 1, 2022. Mandatory Service Announcements (MSAs) were sent to customers on March 14, 2022, providing customers with more than 180 days notice before the changes take effect. Customers who signed or renewed a commit contract with a fixed or floating discount before October 1, 2022, are not impacted by the price changes until the end of their contracts. We sent a MSA Addendum on September 15, 2022 that revised the date for some of the changes (including price changes to existing SKUs and Persistent Disk SKU and price changes) to April 1, 2023, giving customers and partners nearly an additional six months to prepare for these changes.

Additional questions

I have a commit contract with Google Cloud. Will my prices change?

We will honor the commitments we make to our customers, so those with existing commit contracts as of October 1, 2022 will not be impacted by these changes until the end of their contracts. Please contact your sales rep to understand what changes may occur.

How will we help customers manage these changes?

Many of the changes have fairly simple choices associated with them. For example, for Persistent Disk snapshots, customers can look at each application using snapshots to see if the move to the new archive class option makes sense. The new snapshots are managed consistently with the current snapshot, so changes to the configuration to use the new tier for future snapshots can be relatively straightforward. Read about the options for Persistent Disk pricing.

More mitigation options generally exist in the changes being made to Cloud Storage, where customers may need to decide if sticking with current multi-regional storage buckets, or moving them to a regional or dual-region location, makes more sense. Read about the options that are available for storage.

Google Cloud is also changing how customers are charged for Load Balancing offerings and introducing new charges for outbound data processing. And we are also simplifying and/or reducing SKUs for five networking products to improve the customer billing experience. Read more about the options available for Load Balancing.

When and how will existing customers be notified?

Customers were notified by a Mandatory Service Announcement (MSA), which was sent on March 14, 2022. An updated MSA Addendum was sent on September 15, 2022.

Will the changes be worldwide?

The changes will apply globally. For any pricing changes, local currency list prices will be adjusted to USD prices to help avoid currency arbitrage.

Where can I find more information, resources, and support?

In addition to this FAQ, you can reference the blog post about these changes: Updates to Google Cloud’s infrastructure capabilities and pricing

We plan to update this FAQ regularly with more information. However, If you have any additional questions that are not answered in this FAQ, please reach out to your Google Specialist.

*Note: This pricing analysis is valid as of February 2022