Apple Confirms It Uses Google's Cloud For iCloud Services (cnbc.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: A file that Apple updated on its website last month provides the first acknowledgment that it's relying on Google's public cloud for data storage for its iCloud services. The disclosure is fresh evidence that Google's cloud has been picking up usage as it looks to catch up with Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud infrastructure business. Some media outlets reported on Google's iCloud win in 2016, but Apple never provided confirmation. Apple periodically publishes new versions of a PDF called the iOS Security Guide. For years the document contained language indicating that iCloud services were relying on remote data storage systems from Amazon Web Services, as well as Microsoft's Azure. But in the latest version, the Microsoft Azure reference is gone, and in its place is Google Cloud Platform. Before the January update, Apple most recently updated the iOS Security Guide in March. The latest update doesn't indicate whether Apple is using any Google cloud services other than core storage of "objects" like photos and videos. The document also doesn't make it clear when Apple started storing data in Google's cloud.

Comments

Apple stores data on Google, metadata locally

[SuperKendall]

The article doesn't seem to break it out, but I recall what Apple has been doing with storage is that they store encrypted data on third party clouds (like AWS / Google / Azure), but all of the metadata aspects are held on Apple servers so they maintain control.

So why the massive datacenters?

[mbourgon]

Since they've been building datacenters for over 5 years, what are they using them for? Even the 500k square foot one in North Carolina was already overkill, more so if they're just holding metadata.

Fun task: on Windows, rip a new CD with iTunes, preferably something rare. Start Resource Monitor, go to Network, TCP Connections, Search for iTunes. Was trying to find a different network hog this weekend and saw iTunes uploading to AWS, which made no sense.