Google Cloud moves to Montreal

With California and the Netherlands, Montreal was announced today as part of the list of the new cloud services clusters of the research giant.

Diane Greene, senior vice president of Google Cloud, made the announcement today at the Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco this week. While the infrastructure of its services is currently located in Oregon, Iowa, South Carolina, Belgium, Taiwan and Tokyo, these three new regions are in addition to those already announced by the company: Sao Paulo, Finland, Frankfurt, London, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney.

“What we do is expand our network by meeting storage needs close to our customers in order to increase speed and reduce the latency of our services in Canada.”
The diversification of the geographic location of these infrastructures will allow Google Cloud customers to benefit from greater flexibility in the use of the resources they need, as the use of local infrastructures is an effective way to reduce Latency and to increase the possibilities for decentralization.

“What we do is expand our network by meeting storage needs close to our customers in order to increase speed and reduce the latency of our services in Canada, ” said Marie -Josée Lamothe , general manager of Google’s operations in Quebec, in an interview with Les Affaires .

Obviously, Google seems to have a certain appeal for Montreal. Recently, the company announced an investment of $ 4.5 million over the next three years for artificial intelligence research through a grant administered by the Montreal Learning Algorithm Institute (MILA) Will benefit researchers at the Université de Montréal and McGill University. In the same breath, Google also announced that a research group dedicated to deep learning and artificial intelligence would integrate the offices of Google Montreal, which already has about a hundred employees.

“The Cloud Computing is therefore the fourth step in Google’s commitment to recognizing the potential and talent of the Montreal region,” says the Executive Director.

However, the company did not mention the value of the investment that will be made by the location of its Montreal cloud computing center.

While Montreal is already perceived by some as a nerve center for artificial intelligence, this technology is increasingly at the heart of the Google Cloud service offering, as demonstrated yesterday by the new Video Intelligence API Also unveiled as part of Google Cloud Next.

It should be noted that Canada is one of a growing list of countries considering regulations to prohibit companies and organizations from storing data from Canadian citizens abroad for privacy reasons. By establishing itself in Montreal, the only Canadian city that will have Google Cloud infrastructures, the research giant is ensuring that it is in an excellent position to comply with such potential legislation.