Google Enables Free Multicloud Data Transfers in EU/UK Under Data Act

Google has moved to eliminate a key friction point for organisations running workloads across multiple cloud providers in Europe and the UK, announcing that its Data Transfer Essentials service will be available at no cost for customers processing workloads “in parallel” across two or more clouds — a step that goes beyond the EU Data Act’s minimum “at cost” requirement and arrives just as the new rules take effect. (reuters.com)

Background​

What changed and why it matters​

The European Union’s new Data Act is designed to lower switching costs and make it easier for organisations to move data and workloads between cloud providers. One of the Act’s practical effects is to constrain the way hyperscale providers can charge for data transfers (commonly known as egress fees), essentially forcing those charges to reflect cost rather than being used as a commercial barrier. Google’s announcement — to offer free multicloud transfers via a branded “Data Transfer Essentials” option in the EU and UK — was explicitly timed to coincide with the Act’s coming into force. (reuters.com)
This move sits inside a wider regulatory push. UK and EU authorities have been scrutinising hyperscalers — especially Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure — for licensing practices, data egress pricing, and interoperability issues that can lock customers into a single vendor. Recent regulatory reports and investigations have highlighted egress fees and licensing complexity as core competitive bottlenecks in the cloud market.

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What Google announced — the details​

Data Transfer Essentials: free for parallel multicloud​

Google Cloud has introduced Data Transfer Essentials, positioning it as a simple solution to move data between Google Cloud and other providers while running workloads in parallel across clouds. The company stated the service would be available at no cost to customers in the EU and the UK as the Data Act takes effect. Google framed the move as going beyond mere compliance: while the law allows passing through costs, Google elected to waive those fees for relevant multicloud scenarios. The announcement included a quote from Jeanette Manfra, senior director of global risk and compliance at Google Cloud, underscoring the “available today at no cost” position. (reuters.com)

How “parallel” is likely to be interpreted​

Google’s public messaging emphasises scenarios where organisations process workloads in parallel across providers. That phrase typically means architectures where multiple clouds collaborate on the same workload or where parallel pipelines are used for resilience, burst scaling, or specialised processing (for example, data ingest on one cloud and analytics on another). The precise eligibility criteria for the free transfers and any technical or contractual conditions were described at a high level in the announcement; enterprises should expect provider-specific technical requirements and contractual definitions to appear in product documentation or service terms.

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How Microsoft and AWS have responded so far​

Microsoft: “at-cost” policy already in place​

Microsoft updated its Azure data transfer guidance in late August, outlining a process for EU customers to obtain at-cost data transfers between Azure and other providers. The Azure documentation explains that customers in the EU can request at-cost transfer pricing for internet transfers related to interoperable, parallel use of multiple providers, and details steps to create a support request for this purpose. That page was last updated on August 26 and describes the administrative workflow customers must follow to signal intent and obtain the accommodation. (learn.microsoft.com)

AWS: reduced rates for eligible cases​

AWS has also signalled accommodation for EU customers, noting in guidance that customers may request reduced data transfer rates for eligible use cases under the Data Act. AWS’ public network and global infrastructure FAQ references the ability for EU customers to request reduced rates and suggests contacting AWS support for specifics. Historically, AWS has emphasised that most customers pay little or nothing for common data transfers, while also offering mechanisms for reduced or waived fees in particular migration or research scenarios. (aws.amazon.com)

Historical context: earlier egress fee changes​

This is not the first time the industry has shifted on egress. In 2024 some providers announced moves to remove or ease egress charges to address regulatory and customer pressure. Those earlier actions set the tone for the Data Act and the September announcements now being rolled out across providers and regions. (reuters.com, cnbc.com)

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Why this is strategically important​

1. Lowers a major switching cost​

Egress fees have been a blunt instrument for discouraging migration. Removing or reducing those fees for multicloud parallel workloads materially reduces the financial friction of moving data and increases the viability of multi-provider strategies.

2. Strengthens multicloud adoption and resilience​

Organisations that use multiple clouds for resilience, regulatory distribution, or best-of-breed capabilities gain more flexible options to balance workloads by cost, performance, or compliance needs. That flexibility supports architectures such as active-active deployments, geographic failover, and specialised processing chains.

3. Shifts the battleground to licensing and interoperability​

Regulators and customers have consistently flagged licensing as a remaining problem: even with cheaper transfer pricing, complex or punitive software licensing can keep workloads bound to one provider. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and other bodies have singled out licensing as a priority since licensing can be used to preserve market power even if transfer fees fall.

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Technical and commercial caveats​

Not all transfers are identical​

Practitioners should expect that “free” or “at-cost” transfer offers will come with technical and procedural conditions:

• Eligibility definitions (e.g., parallel processing, selected services or APIs).
• Required support requests or approvals (Microsoft’s documentation, for example, requires a support ticket and specific metadata such as subscription ID and ASN information). (learn.microsoft.com)
• Time-limited windows or process windows for migrations or transfers.
• Potential volume thresholds or usage patterns that qualify for reduced pricing (AWS’s guidance points customers to request reduced rates for eligible use cases). (aws.amazon.com)

Network and performance realities remain​

Waiving fees does not change physical network constraints. Large data movements still consume bandwidth and require engineering to manage throughput, time-to-migrate, and consistency. Organisations moving petabytes will still need careful planning around transfer windows, parallelisation, and staging.

Providers can shift the economics elsewhere​

Providers may respond commercially by adjusting other elements of pricing or contract terms (for example, support tiers, storage or compute pricing, licensing bundles, or specialised network services). The absence of an egress fee does not by itself guarantee a cheaper overall bill.

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What IT teams should do now (practical checklist)​

• Audit data transfer patterns
• Identify where egress volumes are highest and which workloads are candidates for multicloud or migration.
• Map licensing dependencies and contracts
• Inventory all software licences that might behave differently on other clouds, including Microsoft server and database licences.
• Test portability in small, controlled pilots
• Validate the workflow: initiate a parallel workload across clouds and verify the transfer and processing steps, monitoring latency and cost signals.
• Open formal support cases if needed
• Follow vendor-prescribed procedures (e.g., Azure’s support request steps) to declare intent and obtain at-cost or waived transfer accommodation. (learn.microsoft.com)
• Negotiate contract clauses at renewal
• Use the new regulatory baseline as leverage to secure better exit terms, migration assistance, or explicit egress allowances.
• Align security and compliance workstreams
• Ensure data portability actions meet data protection, residency, and audit requirements across jurisdictions.

These steps give organisations a pragmatic path to exploit the new commercial openings while reducing the risk of surprises or hidden costs.

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Competitive and regulatory implications​

The market dynamic: competition through openness​

Google’s decision to offer free multicloud transfers in the EU and UK is a competitive gambit as much as regulatory compliance. By waiving fees, Google positions itself as the most permissive vendor on transfer economics — a persuasive marketing point for customers considering multicloud architectures. This could nudge enterprises to experiment more with Google Cloud for components of their stack that previously stayed bound to a single provider due to egress economics. (reuters.com)

Regulators still have work to do on licensing and interoperability​

Regulators have repeatedly identified licensing and technical incompatibility as the next barriers to true portability. The UK CMA’s work highlights how licensing, proprietary APIs, and non-standard data formats can be used to entrench market positions even where pricing is constrained. That means industry-level change requires both commercial concessions and technical standards work.

Risk of regulatory fragmentation​

Different jurisdictions may interpret or implement the Data Act and related obligations differently. The UK has pursued its own cloud market scrutiny via the DMCCA and CMA, and coordination between Brussels and London is not automatic. Enterprises operating globally should be mindful that the practical availability and terms of “free” transfers may vary between EU member states, the UK, and other regions.

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Strengths of Google’s move — and potential downsides​

Notable strengths​

• Simple, customer-friendly headline: “Free transfers” removes a clear barrier for multicloud testing and migration. (reuters.com)
• Regulatory signalling: By going beyond the Data Act’s minimum, Google demonstrates proactive compliance and positions itself favourably with regulators and customers.
• Competitive differentiation: If Google’s free option is broad and operationally simple, it could draw workloads previously locked to other clouds by transfer economics.

Potential risks and limitations​

• Eligibility and fine print: The phrase in parallel and product-specific terms may narrow applicability in practice; customers should verify the exact scope.
• Commercial rebound: Providers can reallocate costs to other line items (support, compute, storage, or licensing) — so the “free” headline may not produce equivalent total cost savings in every case.
• Operational complexity: Removing fees doesn’t remove the technical work required for safe, performant migrations across clouds.
• Short-term marketing vs long-term policy: Providers could change policies after market conditions shift; enterprises must avoid assuming permanence without contractual commitments.

Any claims about universal savings or instant portability should be treated cautiously until organisations validate outcomes in their own contexts.

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What remains uncertain or requires verification​

• Precise technical eligibility: the operational definition of “in parallel” and the list of eligible services for Data Transfer Essentials.
• Long-term permanence: whether “no cost” is a stable, evergreen policy or tied to a specific period or set of conditions.
• Interaction with licensing terms: how Microsoft, Oracle, and third-party software licensing will interact with eased transfer fees; licensing complexity remains a primary switching cost.

These points are likely to be clarified in vendor product pages and legal terms, and organisations should request written contract language when negotiating significant migrations.

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Long-term outlook: competition, architecture and standards​

The new environment reduces an obvious economic barrier to multicloud, but the bigger structural questions remain: will the industry move toward technical standards and BYOL parity that truly enable seamless workload mobility? Or will competition shift to other levers — licensing, integrated platform features, or enterprise services — that continue to divide the market?
Regulators have signalled they will not stop at pricing. The CMA and EU bodies are focused on creating conditions where interoperability and fair licensing enable choice, not just cheaper exits. The evolution of frameworks and potential conduct obligations could reshape vendor behaviour well beyond fees, forcing clearer standards for formats, APIs, and contractual transparency.

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Final assessment and practical takeaways​

Google’s decision to waive data transfer fees for multicloud workloads in the EU and UK is a meaningful, customer-facing concession that reduces one of the most visible costs of switching or operating in multicloud. It also raises the bar for competitors and helps translate regulatory pressure into operational benefit for customers. However, the headline should not obscure persistent complexities: licensing, cross-cloud engineering, contractual detail, and practical network constraints still require attention.
For WindowsForum readers and IT decision-makers, the immediate action items are clear:

• Treat this as an opportunity to pilot multicloud patterns with a measured, technical approach.
• Use formal vendor processes and document exchanges to secure written commitments on costs and migration support.
• Focus on licence portability and interoperability as the next strategic priority — price relief is necessary, but not sufficient, to break vendor lock-in.

The EU Data Act has changed the economics of cloud exit in Europe and the UK; Google’s Data Transfer Essentials amplifies that change with a no-cost offer for parallel workloads. That combination makes this a pivotal moment for organisations to reassess portability strategies — but success will come from careful planning, contractual clarity, and technical validation, not from headline pricing alone. (reuters.com)

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Source: Republic World Google Scraps Some Cloud Data Transfer Fees in EU, UK

 

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Google Cloud’s decision to waive multicloud data-transfer charges in the EU and UK — through a new “Data Transfer Essentials” option — has shifted a regulatory tug‑of‑war into a full commercial play, and it matters for every IT team wrestling with vendor lock‑in, migration economics, and multicloud resilience.

Background​

The European Union’s Data Act — due to take effect on September 12, 2025 — forces cloud providers to price data‑egress (transfer) fees on a cost‑reflective basis for certain cross‑provider use cases. The aim is to reduce switching costs and promote competition among hyperscalers long criticised for using egress pricing as a deterrent to migration. Several major cloud vendors updated guidance and product terms in the weeks leading up to the Act’s entry into force.
Google Cloud’s response was to go further than the law’s baseline in headline terms: introducing Data Transfer Essentials and billing qualifying multicloud “parallel” traffic at zero cost for eligible traffic in the EU and the UK. The company framed the move as encouraging multicloud strategies, improving operational resilience, and lowering migration friction.

What Google announced (and how it differs from “at cost”)​

Data Transfer Essentials in plain terms​

• What it is: A configurable option in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) that meters multicloud traffic separately and, for qualifying use cases, bills that traffic at zero cost.
• Eligibility framing: Google’s public messaging targets workloads running in parallel across two or more clouds — a common pattern for resilience, burst scaling, or best‑of‑breed pipelines. The exact operational definition of “in parallel” and the list of eligible services are described in high‑level product statements and are expected to be clarified in detailed product documentation or service terms.

How this stacks up against the EU Data Act and rivals​

• The Data Act’s baseline: The regulation requires cloud providers to avoid charging supra‑competitive egress fees — effectively compelling “at cost” pricing for transfer fees in certain interoperability or portability scenarios. Google’s waiver goes beyond the legal minimum by eliminating charges for qualified transfers rather than passing on marginal cost.
• Competitor moves: Microsoft rolled out an “at cost” mechanism for EU customers that requires a support request and administrative steps to invoke, while Amazon Web Services signalled reduced‑rate options for eligible cases rather than a blanket waiver. Those responses are more conservative than Google’s zero‑cost positioning.

Why this matters: strategic and technical implications​

Lowering the most visible switching cost​

For many organisations, egress fees are the single most visible economic barrier to migration. Removing or sharply reducing that fee for parallel multicloud workloads immediately changes the financial calculus for pilot migrations, hybrid deployments, and burst‑offload patterns. The net effect is to make testing, prototyping, and staged migration far less risky from a billing standpoint.

Competitive signalling and regulatory optics​

Google’s public move is both a customer‑facing product change and a regulatory statement. By volunteering a more permissive commercial posture than the law strictly requires, Google positions itself as proactively aligned with regulators’ competition goals and attempts to reshape customer perceptions about which provider is easiest to exit. That signalling may influence procurement conversations and enterprise vendor short‑lists in the short term.

The battleground shifts to licensing, features, and operational lock‑in​

Even if egress prices fall or disappear in selected scenarios, other lock‑in levers remain:

• Software licensing complexity: Vendor or third‑party licences that price differently on alternative clouds (notably some Microsoft licences) can still make migration uneconomic. Licences, not data transfer costs, can be the dominant migration blocker.
• Proprietary services and APIs: Workloads built around a provider’s unique managed services, proprietary APIs, or data formats still require engineering effort or refactoring to move. Egress deals address cost, not portability of architecture.
• Operational and performance realities: Large bulk transfers remain engineering challenges — bandwidth, staging, consistency, and migration windows are technical constraints that money alone does not solve.

Technical caveats and “fine print” to watch​

Defining “parallel” workloads​

Google’s eligibility language centres on the idea of processing in parallel across multiple clouds. In practice, that term can be interpreted narrowly in product terms to require:

• Simultaneous, coordinated processing pipelines that meet certain API/metadata requirements, or
• Specific networking configurations or service pairings that allow metering as “multicloud parallel” traffic.

Organisations should expect service documentation and contract terms to define this precisely; pilots are essential to confirm real eligibility before relying on assumed cost savings.

Metering, observability, and audit trails​

When an egress waiver applies only to metered “qualifying” traffic, auditability becomes crucial. IT teams must be able to:

• Identify and tag flows that qualify,
• Produce logs and reconciliations to support billing disputes, and
• Validate that multi‑provider test runs are being classified as expected by vendor billing systems.

Potential commercial rebalance​

Providers can — and historically have — adjust pricing and packaging across other line items. Removing a visible egress charge does not guarantee lower total cost of ownership if:

• Compute or storage pricing is restructured,
• Support tiers, enterprise services, or managed offerings are repriced, or
• Licensing surcharges or interconnect services acquire new premiums.

Practical checklist for Windows/Enterprise IT teams​

• Audit current egress volumes and identify candidate workloads that could exploit waived transfers. Focus on high‑egress pipelines, backups, and migration artifacts.
• Inventory license dependencies (OS, database, middleware, third‑party libraries) and quantify the cost difference of running those services on alternative clouds. Treat licensing as a first‑order migration risk.
• Run small, controlled pilots that implement true parallel processing between clouds, and verify that vendor billing classifies traffic as eligible for waiver. Collect screenshots, logs, and support case IDs.
• Open formal vendor support requests and secure written confirmation of eligibility and duration for waived transfers; negotiate contractual clauses where migrations are material to business continuity.
• Reassess disaster‑recovery and high‑availability designs to take advantage of lower egress friction, while preserving attention to latency, consistency, and failover automation.

Commercial and regulatory analysis​

Short‑term winners and marketing effects​

Google’s zero‑cost message is a potent marketing differentiator and could accelerate short‑term experimentation on GCP. By making the economic case for multicloud testing easier, Google may gain share among risk‑averse procurement teams and cloud architects looking to de‑risk projects.

Medium‑term market dynamics​

Regulatory pressure — notably from EU bodies and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) — is already shifting incentives. Even where providers implement “at cost” frameworks, the market will increasingly compete on:

• Ease of data portability (tools, guides, migrations services),
• Licensing fairness and clarity, and
• Native cross‑cloud interoperability features.

Those battlegrounds are likely where durable competitive advantage will be fought, not in headline egress pricing alone.

Risk of regulatory fragmentation​

The Data Act is an EU‑level instrument; the UK has its own regulatory tools and the CMA has been an active investigator of cloud market dynamics. Enterprises operating across jurisdictions should be prepared for variations in implementation and interpretation between the EU, UK, and other regions — meaning a single global playbook won’t fit every market.

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Strengths of Google’s move​

• Simplicity for procurement: A zero‑cost headline cuts through complex bill estimates and creates a straightforward negotiation point with finance teams.
• Regulatory alignment: By exceeding the minimal legal requirement, Google reduces the friction of regulatory approval processes and gains goodwill with regulators looking to boost competition.
• Customer experimentation: Lowered transfer costs make it easier to trial multicloud patterns (analytics on one cloud, storage on another, failover between providers), which can accelerate adoption of best‑of‑breed architectures.

Risks and limits​

• Eligibility opacity: The value depends on precise product definitions of “parallel” — firms should be cautious until contractual language and operational metering are explicit.
• Commercial rebound risk: Providers could shift margin to adjacent products, meaning the elimination of transfer fees is not a guaranteed reduction of total spend.
• Technical effort remains: Migration engineering, data consistency, and performance tuning still require substantial project resources and timeline commitments.

How this affects Windows administrators and enterprise architects​

Windows shops and enterprises that rely on Microsoft technologies must treat this moment as a policy and procurement opening, not a turnkey migration signal. Tactical recommendations:

• Use the Data Act and vendor concessions as negotiation leverage in contract renewals, explicitly requesting written terms on egress, migration support, and licensing portability.
• Pilot cross‑cloud directory and identity integration scenarios (Azure AD + GCP IAM) to identify licensing or SSO wrinkles prior to large migrations.
• Revalidate disaster‑recovery playbooks in a multicloud context: automation, DNS failover, and cross‑cloud backup restores need verification even if transfer costs fall.

Verification and known unknowns​

Several claims circulating in press summaries require careful verification before treating them as settled facts:

• Reports quoting specific contract backlogs (for example, a cited figure of ~$106 billion in cloud contracts and a conversion expectation attributed to Google Cloud leadership) should be treated as unverified unless confirmed by official financial filings or direct company statements. Those numbers are time‑sensitive and dependent on disclosure conventions; they are not validated within the vendor documentation and regulatory summaries consolidated here. Exercise caution when using them in procurement or investor analysis.
• Assertions about customer lists (for example, naming particular AI labs or customers relying on GCP for specialized GPU clusters) may be accurate in public reporting but should be verified against vendor case studies or contractual confirmations before relying on them for strategic decisions. The regulatory and product documentation examined here focuses on pricing and policy, not exhaustive customer rosters.

When facts are time‑sensitive (stock prices, contract values, or customer disclosures), the only reliable route is direct verification from official company filings, vendor product pages, or primary vendor support confirmations.

Tactical playbook for the next 90 days​

• Establish a cross‑functional migration task force: procurement, legal, SRE, network, and application owners. Draft a prioritized list of pilot candidates.
• Execute a controlled pilot to prove the multicloud pipeline, capture vendor metering evidence, and confirm zero‑cost treatment in practice. Escalate any discrepancies through formal support channels and retain documentation.
• Review and rewrite renewal clauses: insist on explicit egress treatment, migration support credits, and license portability assurances where migration is business‑critical.
• Maintain a vendor neutrality checklist: ensure critical services have contingency plans that do not depend solely on egress economics — e.g., database replication strategies, container registry mirrors, and IaC portability.

Final assessment​

The EU Data Act has altered the contractual baseline for cloud exits, and Google’s Data Transfer Essentials amplifies that change by offering a customer‑friendly option that eliminates one visible barrier to multicloud operations. This is a meaningful win for customers in the short term: it lowers experimentation costs and forces competitors to respond. However, price concessions do not equal automatic portability. Durable multicloud freedom will be decided by licensing fairness, interoperability standards, and honest, enforceable contractual terms — not egress headlines alone. Organizations should treat the new environment as an operational opportunity, not a migration panacea: pilot deliberately, secure written guarantees, and keep a close eye on how providers respond commercially across compute, storage, and licensing lines.
The market has turned a regulatory nudge into an active commercial battle. For IT teams and Windows administrators, the next months are an ideal window to pilot multicloud patterns, tighten contractual protections, and rework DR and portability plans — while remaining skeptical of any single headline that promises instant, cost‑free migration without engineering work or licensing consequences.

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Source: CryptoRank Google Cloud changes data transfer fee model with new EU laws on the horizon | Tech Google | CryptoRank.io