The definition of cloud services in this book is as follows: “a set of Internet-based application, storage and computing services sufficient to support most users’ needs, thus enabling them to largely or totally dispense with local data storage and application software”. Looking at Google, the company offers a wide range of Internet-based services to the public from the initial search service through applications such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Earth, Google Maps, and the Google App Engine. All are implemented on their extensive physical infrastructure. Google also provides a range of services internally including GFS, Chubby, Bigtable and MapReduce. These are certainly all cloud services, running in the Internet and aiming to largely or totally dispense with local serv

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The definition of cloud services in this book is as follows: “a set of Internet-based application, storage and computing services sufficient to support most users’ needs, thus enabling them to largely or totally dispense with local data storage and application software”. Looking at Google, the company offers a wide range of Internet-based services to the public from the initial search service through applications such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Earth, Google Maps, and the Google App Engine. All are implemented on their extensive physical infrastructure. Google also provides a range of services internally including GFS, Chubby, Bigtable and MapReduce. These are certainly all cloud services, running in the Internet and aiming to largely or totally dispense with local services, for example, Google Docs replacing word processing on local machines.
The services cover both software as a service, in the case of Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Earth and Google Maps from the list above and platform as a service, in the case of the Google App Engine. The internal services are also an example of a private cloud offering platform as a service facilities.
In conclusion, Google can now be viewed as an extensive provided of cloud services offering both software and platform as a service, but not yet operating in the domain of infrastructure as a service.