Google announced acquiring cybersecurity startup Wiz for $32 billion. The leading Big Tech company will keep the data security platform ‘multocloud’, retaining its hybrid feature. In a recent investor call, Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, stated that 

 “Multicloud is something our customers want. Our commitment to multicloud means that new IT projects an organization does with Google Cloud can work with their existing IT investments, and allows them to choose different vendors for products in the future. Customer don’t want to be locked into one vendor.” 

Wiz is a massive revenue-generating cybersecurity company with an annual revenue rate of $700 million. It is one of the leading cloud security providers, trusted by over 50 percent of the Fortune 100 companies. The speculations of Google acquiring Wiz started last year, reaching a final agreement after massive dialogues. 

The most prominent bottleneck between the two companies was retaining the customers of Wiz, considering that they use hybrid cloud arrangement and if Wiz is converted into a Google-only shop, the cybersecurity platform may lose its customers’ interest. Notably, Wiz supports multiple cloud platforms, making it popular among its users. 

Competing Cloud Companies

As per the report of Statista, AWS is leading with 30 percent of the global cloud market with Azure second in race. In contrast, Google only shares 12 percent of the market. Before this acquisition, it was presumed that Google lags behind in the cloud market because AWS was launched earlier. Microsoft has a stronghold in the IT industry, along with its partnership with OpenAI. Now, Google has made a record-breaking deal with Wiz, which has filled a huge gap of customers and made a strong entry in the cloud market. However, it is worth mentioning how far Google can go with this multi-cloud security platform. 

Google to ease Antitrust Scrutiny with Wiz 

For years, Google has been under intense antitrust scrutiny due its dominance in operating systems, advertisement, and search engine. Considering the multicloud feature of Wiz, Google may argue that it supports competition, losing antitrust scrutiny. However, Trump’s stance is yet to be heard on antitrust regulations in the US.