Google lowers prices, further opens doors to Compute Engine

Google introduced somewhat of an overhaul for its Compute Engine virtual machine on Thursday, making the cloud service more readily available to more users.

Marc Cohen, a software manager on the Google Cloud Platform team, outlined in a blog post that today's update essentially boils down to three things: lower costs, more functionality and access for more customers.

Cohen also cited a recent review by Scalr founder Sebastian Stadil published on GigaOm, highlighting the speed of the cloud infrastructure against competitors.

Starting today, the Infrastructure-as-a-Service is being made available to all customers who sign up for Google's Gold Support package, the second highest of the company's four tiers of cloud customer support.

Additionally, Google is cutting all Compute Engine pricing by four percent.

There are a host of new features detailed on the Google Developers blog. Some of the big ones include an revamped admin dashboard (as seen in the screenshot above), two more supported zones across Europe, and five new instance type families along with 16 new types of instances.

The Internet giant first introduced Compute Engine last June at Google I/O. It's highly likely that we'll continue to see some more big updates for the cloud infrastructure service over the next few weeks and at the annual expo this May.

Screenshot via The Google Developers Blog