Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurain recently emphasized the importance of edge cloud and "bringing the cloud technology to a 5G network." It's no surprise that, on March 5th, Google Cloud unveiled several strategies to keep up with cloud rivals in the telecom industry:

• Global Mobile Edge Cloud (GMEC)

• Collaboration with AT&T for enterprise services

• Anthos for Telecom, an open-source Kubernetes service for telos

Google Cloud’s series of announcements confirmed our view that centralized cloud applications are rapidly moving to edge. As a result, developers are increasingly using “container/ Kubernetes” or “serverless” to better adapt to the edge computing architecture.

It is worth noting that the Google Cloud & AT&T partnership on edge solutions focuses specifically on several vertical industries such as manufacturing, retail, transportation, and gaming. It is different from the comprehensive partnership that AT&T and Microsoft signed in 2019. We reckon that Google Cloud is getting more competitive in the three-horse race among AWS, Azure, and Google. We expect to see more partnerships between cloud vendors and global/regional telecoms in the future.

Ironically, despite the partnership, WSJ reported that AT&T is also cooperating with DOJ on the antitrust case against Google. It is a classic frenemy business practice. While on one hand, AT&T needs to leverage Google Cloud to better monetize 5G through business services; On the other hand, AT&T is competing with Google on advertising dollars through its Xandr advertising division (formally AppNexus).