Apple Reportedly Storing Over 8 Million Terabytes of iCloud Data on Google Servers

Apple has dramatically increased the amount of iCloud user data it stores on Google Cloud, according to The Information.

The report claims Apple now has over eight million terabytes of data stored on Google's servers. As of mid-May, Apple was reportedly on track to spend around $300 million on Google cloud storage services this year, which would represent an increase of roughly 50% from all of 2020. Apple is said to be the largest corporate client for Google Cloud, dwarfing other high-profile customers like Spotify.

Google Cloud staffers have apparently even given Apple an internal code name that hints at its size as a customer: "Bigfoot."

Apple relies on a combination of its own data centers and third-party cloud storage services, such as Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services, to store iCloud user data like photos and messages. Apple does not provide third-party cloud storage providers with the keys to decrypt user data stored on their servers, ensuring a strong level of security.

The report speculates that Apple's increased use of Google Cloud suggests the company's rising cloud storage requirements have outpaced its ability to develop and operate its own data centers needed to handle the resulting data.