Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai claimed his outfit’s cloud business was in the position it is today due to the hard work by the company partners.
Google Cloud’s sales surged 45 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter despite the public cloud giant making an operating loss.
Revenues for the fourth quarter of 2021 hit $5.5 billion for Google Cloud, parent company Alphabet’s results show, but it racked up losses of $890 million – cut from $1.2 billion compared with the fourth quarter of 2020.
Pichai said Alphabet’s backlog had increased “more than 70 percent to $51 billion” in Q4 which can mostly be attributed to Google Cloud, while total deal volume for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) rose 80 percent for the full year compared with 2020.
The CEO praised the role of partners in growing Cloud revenues, claiming that customer GCP spend through channel partners more than doubled in 2021.
“Our partner ecosystem is helping accelerate our growth. For the full year 2021 compared with the full year 2020, the number of customers spending more than $1m through the marketplace increased by 6x.
“Customer spend through channel partners on GCP more than doubled, and the number of active certifications within our top global systems integrators more than doubled as well.”
Google’s CFO Ruth Porat said the tech giant remains focused on investing in Cloud to turn it into a profitable business after another quarter of losses.
