Nearline is Google’s rival for the Glacier of Amazon Web Service. Unlike Glacier, which is considered to rely on Bluray, Nearline uses flash and disc. Google thus makes much of its own three-second restore times, as AWS says “Glacier is optimized for infrequently accessed information where a retrieval time of many hours is appropriate.”

That Nearline is dwell, Google has to promote it.

Google’s got that covered also by letting import over HTTP or HTTPS if changing from a different cloud supplier sounds like a pain in the posterior. AWS’ S3′ can make data accessible over HTTP/ S you need to worry about is lots of traffic prices that are egress rather than the hassle of downloading, uploading and so forth.

Microsoft’s Azure does not have a service to match Nearline or Glacier, but Redmond’s not the biggest loser here. That crown likely goes to tape sellers, who are the goal of Google’s huge offer to new customers as AWS. Big tape users who have held out from making the jump to cloud have six months to examine Nearline at scale. With the likes of Quantum wobbling, IBM fighting to turn a quid with any type of storage, the final thing tape players want is Google giving away a competitive product.