Price isn't everything: Google bets big on machine learning

Google is starting to piece together a cloud platform strategy beyond just being a lower-cost option than the competition, but it's a considerable risk, banking on a set of services many enterprises likely won't use for years to come. Machine learning and deep analytics are the latest trend to gain attention in the cloud market, and Google has latched on wholeheartedly -- it sees these tools a way to differentiate in the market, by externalizing what has driven it to be one of the largest corporations in the world. The most full-throated endorsement of this strategy emerged at the GCP Next user conference back in March. Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google parent company Alphabet Inc., talked in broad strokes about creating an Internet operating system, adding that in five years every major IPO will be for companies using machine learning. "The platform is not the end, it's the bottom and above it is machine learning," Schmidt said.