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Imho, and as a xoogler who's been in Google Cloud's ecosystem the past few years, Google Cloud's three big focus areas have been AI (this is an evolution from t

Imho, and as a xoogler who's been in Google Cloud's ecosystem the past few years, Google Cloud's three big focus areas have been AI (this is an evolution from their historical focus on data, then also analytics), Distributed Cloud (Anthos++) and security (post the Mandiant acquisition). They'll never be able to compete on base infra, given their late entry into the game, lack of presence in certain markets, and the lock the competition has in some industries (Azure in industrial/mfg, AWS in pharma, etc), and they know that, so they've lately been focused on what they believe they can control. One of those things is the narrative that Google Cloud is the most secure cloud. It shouldn't be overlooked that acquiring Wiz is also a way for Google to secure a beachhead in half the Fortune 100, many of which are "enemy" territory. The price is high, but there aren't many options available and Wiz has the advantage of being built on Google Cloud natively, and already have Marketplace integrations completed. https://cloud.google.com/customers/wiz https://cloud.google.com/customers/wiz

kccqzy 2y ago
Even before the Mandiant acquisition they integrated Chronicle into Cloud. It's clear that they were focusing on security very early on.
mrweasel 2y ago
I can't help feel like this will be rolled into GCP and quickly lose support for Azure and AWS and then just die. That's a lot of money to spend to kill off a business.
- arccy 2y ago
  GCP has been doing more multi cloud stuff lately though: Anthos for K8s in other clouds, BigQuery Omni for bigquery in other clouds
  - glenngillen 2y ago
    They even had a whole campaign recently (maybe reInvent?) that said something to the effect of “we know we’re you’re second cloud”
  - klooney 2y ago
    I rolled out their "workloads for AWS" stuff recently, it was pretty slick to be able to have AWS IAM roles just translate to GCP roles. You don't have to run your own CA like you do for AWS Anywhere.
- ABS 2y ago
  that would immediately shed half the value of the company and Google would need to book a huge loss e.g. half of Fortune 100 use Wiz and I assure you most of them do not use GCP (or do not use only GCP)
  - Miraste 2y ago
    That hasn't stopped them before. Fitbit and Nest, for example. Granted, this is an order of magnitude more money to waste. Maybe they'll come up with a better strategy this time.
    - mattzito 2y ago
      Neither of those are enterprise products, though. Looker, as a better comparison, is still available on AWS and Azure.
      - hadlock 2y ago
        Google doesn't have a strong record keeping enterprise products around either. I would expect them to absorb this product, release a similar product based on the technology but fully integrated, then sunset Wiz asap.
  - Keyframe 2y ago
    half of Fortune 100 use Wiz gonna need a citation on that. All I could find was their own quotes.
    - ABS 2y ago
      it's obviously from their own quotes but you can get most of the names in their various customers use cases, joint PRs and the likes (and those required the customers' direct approval )
  - VirusNewbie 2y ago
    I would think the majority of f100 is multi cloud and absolutely uses GCP for at least some workloads.
- summerlight 2y ago
  I don't think that makes much sense in business. They want to move customers from competitors and as an underdog you need to provide some migration path. You don't get these kind of system integration freely. Provide your service in competitors to smooth their transition path but keep the latest and best features in GCP. This was the idea of k8s.
- zoogeny 2y ago
  I'm slightly baffled by this acquisition but arguing against you actually helps me make some sense of it. If Google wants to be "the best of the best" at security and some set of potential customers use Wiz as their "best of the best" security, then this is a way to convert those customers to Google. Consider some org that prioritizes security, like at the board level. They maybe don't really care about the nickel and dime cost of AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP since it comes out to 10s or 100s of millions of opex in the end. What they do care about is the cleanest record possible with respect to security. And Wiz is a key component to their position on security that is communicated to investors - it is a social proof that they are taking security very seriously. This now becomes a tool for Google when trying to win their business. By degrading the value of Wiz on AWS/Azure/Oracle/Salesforce they are taking away that bullet point on security for a subset of competitors customers. And that may entice some of them to move their entire cloud service to GCP. So whatever revenue they lose on the Wiz side from a dozen or so cancellations they would hope to make up with a few 100 million dollar whales. I just find it hard to believe that enough whale level cloud compute business will be generated in this way to justify $32b. This is really the best take I have on the acquisition and it feels unsatisfying, as if there is some other decisive information that would provide a justification for such a valuation. Maybe there is some government mandate coming down the pipeline that isn't very public yet? Some kind of legislation that will force companies to adopt stricter security policies? That could precipitate the kind of changes that would justify this kind of massive valuation.
  - ExoticPearTree 2y ago
    Customers will not start using GCP more instead of AWS for example just because Google owns Wiz. Degrading Wiz capabilities on AWS/Azure/etc will not drive more customers to Googke. CSPM and cloud workloads don’t go hand in hand. What will happen is that other companies will capture the market share left by Google. Will the offerings be less then Wiz quality-wise? Sure, but it will be way cheaper than moving to GCP. The best option will be to leave Wiz as it is - standalone.
belter 2y ago
> a way for Google to secure a beachhead in half the Fortune 100 If that is their objective, they will fail again, since this is the land of good account management. Being able to call somebody on the phone if required. Something AWS excels on, Microsoft a little bit, while Google is rumored to have humans working there, but they are rarely seen.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  This is such an underrated weakness of Google. When I was working at AWS ProServe, we never even took GCP as a serious competitor. Their customer service, acount management and enterprise sales team was so horrendous it was laughable. I don’t think we even had talking points about why AWS was better than GCP like we did Azure.
  - ABS 2y ago
    what drives me mad is that it's not even underrated! everyone knows, everyone has been talking (and complaning) about this for something like 15 years! I personally know of 2 big GCP customers who, over the years, left GCP because of this and the impact it had in critical situations. This very feedback was given in both cases to people considerably high up on GCP's ladder and... nothing's ever changed. I'm sure plenty other big migrations off GCP provided the same feedback, to no avail. When Diane Greene first and then Thomas Kurian became Google Cloud CEOs people thought that finally, due to their previous experiences in very Enterprise-aggressive companies, they would improve massively on that front. Did they improve the situation? a bit. Massively? bringing GCP finally on-par with anyone else (not better than anyone else, just... the same)? nope, not even close.
    - otterley 2y ago
      Google is, at its core, an advertising company that tries to disguise itself as a technology company. When necessity calls, they will undoubtedly elect to divert resources towards their core business and away from their hobby projects (which GCP is).
Thorrez 2y ago
>and security (post the Mandiant acquisition) As a Googler who works in GCP security, security has been a key differentiator for GCP long before the Mandiant acquisition. Google invented BeyondCorp (a primary driver of Zero Trust). Google helped create security keys (U2F, FIDO, Webauthn), and was I think the first major company to adopt them, both for employees, and for consumers. Google was one of the first major companies to offer a bug bounty, in 2010. Google's Project Zero searching for vulnerabilities in other companies'/organizations' software I think was pretty much unprecedented when it was created. Look at the number of times other tech companies get hacked compared to Google. Google got hacked in 2009 by China (I believe that was the first time a major company admitted to being hacked by government). That was a major turning point. Ever since then it's been "never again". Disclosure: my thoughts are my own.
- belter 2y ago
  > Look at the number of times other tech companies get hacked compared to Google. Your whole post is confusing Security of the Cloud with Security in the Cloud. And conflating GCP with Google but those are just examples of why GCP has such a small market percentage.
  - Thorrez 2y ago
    The security of GCP rests on the security of Google. If Google gets hacked, GCP customers are not secure. Additionally: Google offers BeyondCorp products as GCP products. A big example is IAP. Do AWS and Azure offer something like IAP? If so, I think they were created in response to IAP. Another Google/GCP security product related to zero trust is Chrome Enterprise Premium: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/introducing-chrome-enterprise-premium https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/int... . Another innovative GCP security product is VPC Service Controls. Do AWS and Azure offer something like that? If so, I think they were created in response to VPC Service Controls. Security keys: I mentioned in my previous comment how they're used by consumers (that includes GCP customers). GCP is making MFA mandatory this year: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/mandatory-mfa-is-coming-to-google-cloud-heres-what-you-need-to-know https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/man... Bug bounties protect GCP customers by making sure GCP products don't have vulnerabilities. Project Zero protects GCP customers by finding vulnerabilities in products that GCP customers use (although it also finds vulnerabilities in products that AWS and Azure customers use). When Microsoft got hacked by China in 2023, China stole Microsoft's signing key, and used it to mint tokens to impersonate Azure AD users of Microsoft customers. That's relevant to security in the Cloud. GCP products are also recognized for security: https://cloud.google.com/resources/forrester-unstructured-data-security-2021-report https://cloud.google.com/resources/forrester-unstructured-da... https://www.varonis.com/blog/forrester-wave-data-security-platforms-2025 https://www.varonis.com/blog/forrester-wave-data-security-pl... https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure-modernization/google-is-a-leader-in-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-strategic-cloud-platform-services https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure-modern... https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/google-is-named-a-visionary-in-the-2024-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-siem/ https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/goo... https://www.teradata.com/press-releases/2020/forrester-2020-data-management-for-analytics https://www.teradata.com/press-releases/2020/forrester-2020-...

kccqzy 2y ago

Even before the Mandiant acquisition they integrated Chronicle into Cloud. It's clear that they were focusing on security very early on.

mrweasel 2y ago

I can't help feel like this will be rolled into GCP and quickly lose support for Azure and AWS and then just die. That's a lot of money to spend to kill off a business.

arccy 2y ago
GCP has been doing more multi cloud stuff lately though: Anthos for K8s in other clouds, BigQuery Omni for bigquery in other clouds
- glenngillen 2y ago
  They even had a whole campaign recently (maybe reInvent?) that said something to the effect of “we know we’re you’re second cloud”
- klooney 2y ago
  I rolled out their "workloads for AWS" stuff recently, it was pretty slick to be able to have AWS IAM roles just translate to GCP roles. You don't have to run your own CA like you do for AWS Anywhere.
ABS 2y ago
that would immediately shed half the value of the company and Google would need to book a huge loss e.g. half of Fortune 100 use Wiz and I assure you most of them do not use GCP (or do not use only GCP)
- Miraste 2y ago
  That hasn't stopped them before. Fitbit and Nest, for example. Granted, this is an order of magnitude more money to waste. Maybe they'll come up with a better strategy this time.
  - mattzito 2y ago
    Neither of those are enterprise products, though. Looker, as a better comparison, is still available on AWS and Azure.
    - hadlock 2y ago
      Google doesn't have a strong record keeping enterprise products around either. I would expect them to absorb this product, release a similar product based on the technology but fully integrated, then sunset Wiz asap.
- Keyframe 2y ago
  half of Fortune 100 use Wiz gonna need a citation on that. All I could find was their own quotes.
  - ABS 2y ago
    it's obviously from their own quotes but you can get most of the names in their various customers use cases, joint PRs and the likes (and those required the customers' direct approval )
- VirusNewbie 2y ago
  I would think the majority of f100 is multi cloud and absolutely uses GCP for at least some workloads.
summerlight 2y ago
I don't think that makes much sense in business. They want to move customers from competitors and as an underdog you need to provide some migration path. You don't get these kind of system integration freely. Provide your service in competitors to smooth their transition path but keep the latest and best features in GCP. This was the idea of k8s.
zoogeny 2y ago
I'm slightly baffled by this acquisition but arguing against you actually helps me make some sense of it. If Google wants to be "the best of the best" at security and some set of potential customers use Wiz as their "best of the best" security, then this is a way to convert those customers to Google. Consider some org that prioritizes security, like at the board level. They maybe don't really care about the nickel and dime cost of AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP since it comes out to 10s or 100s of millions of opex in the end. What they do care about is the cleanest record possible with respect to security. And Wiz is a key component to their position on security that is communicated to investors - it is a social proof that they are taking security very seriously. This now becomes a tool for Google when trying to win their business. By degrading the value of Wiz on AWS/Azure/Oracle/Salesforce they are taking away that bullet point on security for a subset of competitors customers. And that may entice some of them to move their entire cloud service to GCP. So whatever revenue they lose on the Wiz side from a dozen or so cancellations they would hope to make up with a few 100 million dollar whales. I just find it hard to believe that enough whale level cloud compute business will be generated in this way to justify $32b. This is really the best take I have on the acquisition and it feels unsatisfying, as if there is some other decisive information that would provide a justification for such a valuation. Maybe there is some government mandate coming down the pipeline that isn't very public yet? Some kind of legislation that will force companies to adopt stricter security policies? That could precipitate the kind of changes that would justify this kind of massive valuation.
- ExoticPearTree 2y ago
  Customers will not start using GCP more instead of AWS for example just because Google owns Wiz. Degrading Wiz capabilities on AWS/Azure/etc will not drive more customers to Googke. CSPM and cloud workloads don’t go hand in hand. What will happen is that other companies will capture the market share left by Google. Will the offerings be less then Wiz quality-wise? Sure, but it will be way cheaper than moving to GCP. The best option will be to leave Wiz as it is - standalone.

belter 2y ago

> a way for Google to secure a beachhead in half the Fortune 100 If that is their objective, they will fail again, since this is the land of good account management. Being able to call somebody on the phone if required. Something AWS excels on, Microsoft a little bit, while Google is rumored to have humans working there, but they are rarely seen.

scarface_74 2y ago
This is such an underrated weakness of Google. When I was working at AWS ProServe, we never even took GCP as a serious competitor. Their customer service, acount management and enterprise sales team was so horrendous it was laughable. I don’t think we even had talking points about why AWS was better than GCP like we did Azure.
- ABS 2y ago
  what drives me mad is that it's not even underrated! everyone knows, everyone has been talking (and complaning) about this for something like 15 years! I personally know of 2 big GCP customers who, over the years, left GCP because of this and the impact it had in critical situations. This very feedback was given in both cases to people considerably high up on GCP's ladder and... nothing's ever changed. I'm sure plenty other big migrations off GCP provided the same feedback, to no avail. When Diane Greene first and then Thomas Kurian became Google Cloud CEOs people thought that finally, due to their previous experiences in very Enterprise-aggressive companies, they would improve massively on that front. Did they improve the situation? a bit. Massively? bringing GCP finally on-par with anyone else (not better than anyone else, just... the same)? nope, not even close.
  - otterley 2y ago
    Google is, at its core, an advertising company that tries to disguise itself as a technology company. When necessity calls, they will undoubtedly elect to divert resources towards their core business and away from their hobby projects (which GCP is).

Thorrez 2y ago

>and security (post the Mandiant acquisition) As a Googler who works in GCP security, security has been a key differentiator for GCP long before the Mandiant acquisition. Google invented BeyondCorp (a primary driver of Zero Trust). Google helped create security keys (U2F, FIDO, Webauthn), and was I think the first major company to adopt them, both for employees, and for consumers. Google was one of the first major companies to offer a bug bounty, in 2010. Google's Project Zero searching for vulnerabilities in other companies'/organizations' software I think was pretty much unprecedented when it was created. Look at the number of times other tech companies get hacked compared to Google. Google got hacked in 2009 by China (I believe that was the first time a major company admitted to being hacked by government). That was a major turning point. Ever since then it's been "never again". Disclosure: my thoughts are my own.

belter 2y ago
> Look at the number of times other tech companies get hacked compared to Google. Your whole post is confusing Security of the Cloud with Security in the Cloud. And conflating GCP with Google but those are just examples of why GCP has such a small market percentage.
- Thorrez 2y ago
  The security of GCP rests on the security of Google. If Google gets hacked, GCP customers are not secure. Additionally: Google offers BeyondCorp products as GCP products. A big example is IAP. Do AWS and Azure offer something like IAP? If so, I think they were created in response to IAP. Another Google/GCP security product related to zero trust is Chrome Enterprise Premium: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/introducing-chrome-enterprise-premium https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/int... . Another innovative GCP security product is VPC Service Controls. Do AWS and Azure offer something like that? If so, I think they were created in response to VPC Service Controls. Security keys: I mentioned in my previous comment how they're used by consumers (that includes GCP customers). GCP is making MFA mandatory this year: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/mandatory-mfa-is-coming-to-google-cloud-heres-what-you-need-to-know https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/man... Bug bounties protect GCP customers by making sure GCP products don't have vulnerabilities. Project Zero protects GCP customers by finding vulnerabilities in products that GCP customers use (although it also finds vulnerabilities in products that AWS and Azure customers use). When Microsoft got hacked by China in 2023, China stole Microsoft's signing key, and used it to mint tokens to impersonate Azure AD users of Microsoft customers. That's relevant to security in the Cloud. GCP products are also recognized for security: https://cloud.google.com/resources/forrester-unstructured-data-security-2021-report https://cloud.google.com/resources/forrester-unstructured-da... https://www.varonis.com/blog/forrester-wave-data-security-platforms-2025 https://www.varonis.com/blog/forrester-wave-data-security-pl... https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure-modernization/google-is-a-leader-in-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-strategic-cloud-platform-services https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure-modern... https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/google-is-named-a-visionary-in-the-2024-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-siem/ https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/goo... https://www.teradata.com/press-releases/2020/forrester-2020-data-management-for-analytics https://www.teradata.com/press-releases/2020/forrester-2020-...