So it’s not just the companies that actually purchase capacity from cloud service companies. Everyone. Google has a big cloud, too. You’re on it if you use any sort of Google service like email and photo editing. Seventy million Nigerians recently registered for local elections on Google’s cloud and millions more people study on Google’s cloud through the online educational service Khan Academy.
We flagged this as a critical issue in our contribution to the UNCTAD Information Economy Report, written before Snowden. Now the rubber is hitting the road and billions of revenue are at stake. The Snowden leaks and the view that American tech companies were too cooperative with the United States government have hurt the prospects for American tech companies abroad. Earlier estimates of potential lost sales over the next few years have ranged as high as $180 billion, or 25 percent of industry revenue, according to Forrester Research. To address those concerns, the companies are building more data centers abroad.