"Starting today, Google Cloud customers who wish to stop using Google Cloud and migrate their data to another cloud provider and/or on premises, can take advantage of free network data transfer to migrate their data out of Google Cloud," Amit Zavery, a Google cloud vice president, wrote in the post. In 2018, Cloudflare announced the Bandwidth Alliance, a group of companies, including some cloud providers, that reduce or eliminate those data transfer, or egress, fees. "Restrictive licensing practices remain a far bigger issue to customers who want the choice of working with their preferred cloud provider," the spokesperson said. By making transfer free, Google could be pressuring rivals to follow suit or risk losing out on new business prospects. Last year Google expressed concerns about Microsoft's cloud practices to officials in the U.S. and the European Union.

---

Persons: Amit Zavery, Cloudflare, Zavery, Thomas Kurian Organizations: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Bandwidth Alliance, Oracle, Amazon Web Services, European, European Union Locations: Virginia, U.S