How Google’s 70 global PoPs could ignite an edge data centre boom

In a push to catch up with rivals Amazon and Microsoft, Google unveiled in December 2015 its own cloud content delivery network (CDN), the Google Cloud CDN under project Alpha.

The Cloud CDN uses globally distributed edge caches - including four data centre regions and over 70 edge points-of-presence (PoP) in 33 countries - to cache HTTP(S) Load Balanced content close to users.

The CDN was designed to allow developers to load their applications faster, reducing latency and speeding up content delivery.

Google's launch of its own CDN has come a month after the company partnered with global CDN provider Akamai to speed up its cloud services.

However, with the launch of Cloud CDN Alpha, speculation around Google converting the mentioned 70 PoPs into edge data centres, using the edge caches, also emerged, despite no official announcements by Google.

More here.