Google Inc., owner of the world’s most popular search engine, unveiled a cloud-computing service for building and running applications to help woo customers and challenge Amazon.com Inc.’s Web Services.
The new service, called Compute Engine, will give developers deeper access to computing power through the Internet, Google said today at its I/O developers conference in San Francisco. Compute Engine offers more options for building than the existing Google App Engine service.
“You all now have access to what we have had internally at Google,” said Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president for Chrome and Apps. “We can’t wait to see what you all build next.”
The Mountain View, California-based company is stepping up efforts for cloud-based computing services as it looks for new sources of revenue outside of advertising. Amazon’s offering has become the leading service for businesses to build applications in the cloud.
Google’s new service will offer different levels of computing power using the Linux operating system, as well as data storage. Using the company’s data centers, Compute Engine gives customers 50 percent more power for the money than with other leading cloud services, Google said in a blog posting.
In addition to touting cloud services at the I/O event this week, Google is using the conference to show off other products and features. They include upgrades to its Android mobile software, a tablet computer running the operating system and additions to social network Google+, which was rolled out last year. The event, running at Moscone Center through tomorrow, typically draws thousands of developers.
Today, Google also unveiled versions of its Chrome Web browser designed for Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad tablet computer. Chrome for iPhone will be available as an application for the device, Google said. Chrome has about 310 million users.
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