Elon Musk’s SpaceX signs alliance with Google Cloud to offer satellite internet with Starlink

May
14, 2021

3 min read

This Thursday, Google Cloud announced that it reached an agreement with the company SpaceX to offer satellite internet services through Starlink . The tech giant, owned by Alphabet Inc. , will provide its cloud infrastructure for Elon Musk’s connectivity project.

This agreement involves SpaceX installing Starlink ground terminals in Google’s cloud data centers, which will connect to Starlink satellites .

Thus, Musk customers will be able to access the internet from Google’s infrastructure, while ‘Big Tech’ will be able to provide a faster and more secure connection in hard-to-reach areas, such as large rural areas.

This service will be available to business customers of both companies from the second half of 2021 , Google said in a statement . The first Starlink terminal in a Google data center will be located in Ohio, United States. The rest of the data centers will be announced in the coming months.

“Applications and services that run in the cloud can be transformative for organizations, whether they operate in a networked or remote environment,” said Urs Hölzle , vice president of infrastructure for Google Cloud . The executive also assures that SpaceX will help provide ” fluid, secure and fast access to critical applications and services that customers need to keep their equipment running .”

Deployment of 60 Starlink satellites confirmed pic.twitter.com/RarbrcfUml

– SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 9, 2021

Don’t forget that in 2015, Google invested $ 900 million in Space X, Elon Musk’s aerospace company. This in order to have access to its technology in the future.

Google, SpaceX and Starlink go against Amazon

This alliance also strengthens the position of both companies in the competition against the cloud services of Amazon , the company of Jeff Bezos . It provides hosting on its AWS cloud and also plans to launch some 3,000 satellites into orbit with the Kuiper project , to provide satellite internet .

For now, SpaceX has put 1,625 satellites in orbit , of which 1,550 are in operation and provide beta-phase satellite internet to customers in various parts of the world. In fact, you can already request the Starlink service in Mexico . Meanwhile, Amazon is just about to launch its own.

Last October, Microsoft also struck a similar agreement with SpaceX to connect its Azure cloud to Starlink and use its satellites to offer mobile data centers globally.