Apple executives have taken swipes at Google in the past over its privacy practices. But the iPhone maker trusts Google enough so that over the past year it has dramatically increased the amount of Apple user data it stores in Google’s cloud, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
The increase cements Apple’s status as the largest corporate client for Google’s storage service, dwarfing other high-profile Google customers such as ByteDance and Spotify. As of mid-May, Apple was on track to spend around $300 million on Google cloud storage this year, which would represent an increase of roughly 50% from all of 2020, the person said. Inside Google’s cloud unit, the person said, staffers have even given Apple a code name that hints at its size: Bigfoot.