In a landmark collaboration signaling a fundamental shift in cloud interoperability, rivals Amazon and Google have unveiled a jointly developed multicloud networking service.
The new offering, announced on Sunday, is designed to meet the growing enterprise demand for highly reliable, high-speed connectivity at a time when even brief internet disruptions can trigger massive global outages.
The initiative combines AWS’ Interconnect–multicloud with Google Cloud’s Cross-Cloud Interconnect to create a unified solution that vastly improves network interoperability between the two computing platforms. The critical advantage of this joint service is speed and simplicity: it will enable customers to establish private, high-speed links between the two competing clouds in minutes instead of weeks, drastically simplifying the architecture for enterprises that rely on both services.
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The Outage Catalyst
The urgency behind this collaboration is underscored by recent, high-profile reliability failures. The new service is being unveiled just weeks after a significant Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage on October 20 disrupted thousands of websites worldwide, knocking offline some of the internet’s most popular applications, including Snapchat and Reddit. That single outage is projected to cost U.S. companies between $500 million and $650 million in losses, according to analytics firm Parametrix, highlighting the enormous economic vulnerability tied to cloud stability.
AWS Vice President of Network Services, Robert Kennedy, emphasized the strategic importance of the collaboration, stating, “This collaboration between AWS and Google Cloud represents a fundamental shift in multicloud connectivity.”
Rob Enns, Vice President and General Manager of Cloud Networking at Google Cloud, added that the joint network is intended specifically to make it easier for customers to move data and applications seamlessly between clouds, bolstering resilience.
The partnership occurs amid intense competition in the cloud market, where technology companies are investing billions to build the infrastructure necessary to handle surging internet traffic and the accelerated computing demands of artificial intelligence (AI).
AWS remains the world’s largest cloud provider, followed by Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud.
In the third quarter, Amazon’s cloud business delivered robust growth, generating $33 billion in revenue—more than double Google Cloud’s $15.16 billion.
This collaboration, however, signals that while competition remains fierce in terms of overall revenue and market share, the industry is increasingly prioritizing user experience and resilience through cooperation on foundational infrastructure. Salesforce is noted as one of the early users adopting this new approach, according to Google Cloud.
While the collaboration is being hailed as a win for customers, offering secure, minutes-not-weeks network interoperability—a direct answer to the massive losses incurred from recent outages like the one that cost U.S. companies an estimated $500 million to $650 million after the October AWS disruption—it simultaneously creates a formidable, unified front that could strategically isolate Azure’s position in the lucrative multicloud market.
The New Standard of Connectivity
The joint service, combining AWS’ Interconnect–multicloud and Google Cloud’s Cross-Cloud Interconnect, aims to eliminate the complex, manual, and often costly configurations customers previously needed to stitch together networks across rival platforms. This move sets a new expectation for “direct connection” as the default, not the exception.
For years, Azure, AWS, and Google have competed fiercely, but their multicloud strategies have largely focused on making their own cloud the center of the universe—or the control plane—for managing assets everywhere else.
Microsoft has long positioned Azure as the hybrid and multicloud leader by leveraging its deep ties to the enterprise through products like Windows and Office 365. Its primary multicloud tool, Azure Arc, is designed to let customers manage resources running on-premises, on AWS, and on Google Cloud through the Azure control panel.
Azure’s networking strength has traditionally centered on robust hybrid networking via services like Azure ExpressRoute, which connect customers’ data centers to Azure.