The news: Google Cloud announced plans to open a New Mexico region as part of a $1.2 billion, five-year expansion across Latin America, per RCR Wireless.

Google Cloud catches up: Once it becomes operational, the Mexico region will be the third data region in the geographical area, joining similar deployments in São Paulo, Brazil, and Santiago, Chile. Google now operates 34 regions comprising 103 availability zones globally.

• Google continues to invest in expansion to catch up to leaders Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). In context, Its recent acquisition of Mandiant for $5.4 billion shows its eagerness to improve its third-place cloud market share ranking,
• Google Cloud lost $3.1 billion last year, resulting in price hikes and layoffs in March, likely intended to increase revenue and cut costs to make up for the loss.
• 2022 has been a massive year for Google Cloud expansion in various regions. It added a new Columbus, Ohio, region as well as Milan and Turin regions in Italy.  More cloud regions are coming this year to the US and the Middle East.

Accelerating cloud adoption in Mexico:  Google’s Mexico cloud region will help public sector organizations use cloud technology efficiently and securely.

“The computer developments in Mexico are highly specialized so they can become important references for other Spanish-speaking countries,” said Dr. Juan Carlos Sarmiento Tovilla, director general of information systems at Mexico’s Federal Court of Administrative Justice.

Why this could succeed: Google is diversifying its cloud regions and could soon catch up to Microsoft Azure, which has the most at 57 cloud regions, per TechHQ. 

Expanding service regions in emerging economies such as Latin America and Asia fortifies Google’s position as it grows into a competitive cloud provider. 

Dive deeper: Read more about Google’s dominance in a variety of technology segments in our Power of Google report.