As Expected, Google Announces Cloud Platform Pricing Cuts, Additional OS Support

The buzz around Google announcements that would be made during the company's Google Cloud Platform Live event have all held up, it seems. Over the last few days, new pricing structures for Google's Cloud Platform services have been rumored. Today, Google set those rumors to rest by detailing new pricing, announcing new platform support, and a series of improvements for its IaaS and PaaS offerings.

The crux of Google's message today centered on pricing, productivity, developer choice, and platform support.

Pricing

According to Google, Cloud computing must follow Moore's Law in that steady improvements in computing services should be met with cost savings.

Today, Google announced simplified prices for its on-demand, pay-as-you-go services. Here's the reductions:

Productivity

Google announced the launch of new tools for the Cloud Developer's Console. The new tools allows developers do things like see detailed stack traces for bugs with one-click access to the exact version of the code that caused the issue, taking development time and troubleshooting from hours to minutes.

Developer Choice

Historically, developers needed to choose between the flexibility of Compute Engine's VMs or the auto-management and scaling provided by App Engine. To combine the best of both worlds, Google has announced Managed VMs.

Platform Support

Today, Google also announced new platform support for Compute Engine. Available today, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are available to everyone. Windows Server 2008 R2 platform support has been released in limited preview.

Microsoft is scheduled to make announcements yet this week on the company's own Cloud services.