Report: Google Could Win PayPal Cloud Business

Google is close to winning another big cloud customer in the form of PayPal, beating AWS and Microsoft Azure to the punch, according to reports.

People familiar with the matter speaking to CNBC said that Google is the front-runner in vying for PayPal’s business, but the payments firm is still reviewing others providers and has not yet made a final decision.

PayPal already uses AWS for some of its services, including Braintree and Venmo. But PayPal would be an impressive win for Diane Greene and her Google Cloud Platform division, which currently sits behind both AWS and Azure in terms of revenue.

Google bets on cloud

Google increased its total revenue by 21 percent over the last twelve months, hitting $20.5 billion (£15.6bn).

While a large chunk of that growth came from Google’s bread and butter – search advertising – growth in cloud computing helped Google’s ‘Other Revenues’ pull in $2.2 billion (£1.7bn) this last quarter, a 33 percent hike over the same period last year.

Google’s ‘Other Revenues’ also count Google Play and Google Apps, so it’s difficult to ascertain exactly how well Google Cloud Platform is performing.

Ruth Porat, the chief financial officer of Alphabet, said that the company’s second quarter results were “terrific”.

“We continue to invest responsibly in support of our many compelling opportunities,” she said. Those investments include mobile and video.

But Google’s ‘Other Bets’ segment, which includes technologies like Nest and Verily, continued to suck in money.

‘Other Bets’ suffered losses of $859 million (£652m), on revenue of $185 million (£140m). While that revenue was up from $74 million (£56m) the same time last year, losses also grew, up from $660 million (£500m) year over year.

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