Recently, Google announced that as early as August 16, 2023, IoT Core will be closed from the cloud platform. Many customers are very upset about this terse announcement. Of course, all customers were also contacted by e-mail. There was then still the advice that affected people should back up their data in time or redirect to another service. It was also recommended to contact Google’s customer service.
IoT Core from Google got off to a late start
Although Google is one of the most important companies in the IT sector, it has never quite been able to gain a foothold in the Internet of Things. The introduction of IoT Core in the cloud followed much later than its competitors Amazon and Microsoft. The latter had already dealt with it much earlier and offer extensive cloud services. In addition, Microsoft Azure as well as Amazon Web Services are much more extensively developed than the IoT Core in the Google Cloud.
Google also planned to build an IoT area in the mobile sector based on Android in 2018. However, these plans were dropped again quite soon before the actual implementation. Therefore, most experts assume that IoT is not for Google. But to just unceremoniously shut down IoT Core and leave customers in the lurch is not a good move. There is a lot of anger among customers because Google is also not offering any way to migrate the data.
Where should Google customers go?
The notification email did say that customers should contact their account manager. This should then supposedly give options for moving the data. However, this alleged help is rather smiled at by most customers. The only alternatives are Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. However, these two groups are primarily striving to further expand their own cloud services for their customers. Neither company is particularly interested in migrating data from the Google Cloud.
Until August 15, 2023, the data in the Google Cloud can still be used normally. From August 16, 2023, it will then be irrevocably lost. Since there are hardly any options for migrating the IoT Core data to other systems, numerous customers will certainly lose all their data. The notification email did mention at the end that more information on how to migrate the data will be provided next year. However, this is not a particularly good consolation for customers.
Customer-friendly looks different
Google responded to an inquiry from Heise Developer. In the answer, it was pointed out that only the IoT Core will be switched off. All other cloud services will remain in operation as before. The customer-friendliness was clearly emphasized by Google because the company gives its customers a whole year to look for a suitable alternative.
