Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud have announced a new joint multicloud networking service designed to make it easier and faster for organizations to connect workloads across both platforms.

The collaboration integrates AWS Interconnect with Google Cloud’s Cross-Cloud Interconnect, enabling customers to establish private, high-speed links between the two cloud environments without relying on public internet routing.

According to both companies, customers can now provision dedicated bandwidth and spin up connectivity within minutes, removing much of the manual configuration and physical infrastructure that traditionally slows down multicloud deployments.

The service also introduces an open interoperability specification for multicloud networking — a standard that AWS and Google say is available for other cloud and infrastructure providers to adopt.

Security capabilities include encrypted links between edge routers and redundant paths across multiple facilities to ensure high availability.

Overall, the initiative aims to simplify multicloud operations for enterprises and encourage a more open, flexible cloud ecosystem.

Implications, context, and why this matters

1. Multicloud networking still hides real egress and bandwidth costs

AWS and Google may have introduced private intercloud links, but pricing transparency remains missing.

AWS still lists internet egress at $0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB per month, dropping to $0.05 per GB above 150 TB.
Google Cloud Cross-Cloud Interconnect charges:
- Hourly fees for VLAN attachments
- Region-based egress pricing
- Discounts only when traffic originates in Google Cloud

Without clear inter-cloud transfer pricing, businesses cannot accurately calculate total cost of ownership, making it hard to compare:

The new AWS–Google connectivity
AWS Direct Connect
Third-party fabrics (carrier-neutral interconnection or SDN overlays)

This opacity could slow adoption despite the improved convenience.

2. The new open interoperability spec unlocks opportunities for networking, security, and observability vendors

By publishing an open standard for multicloud network interoperability, AWS and Google effectively invite an ecosystem of third-party providers to build on top of it.

Potential innovations include:

Cross-cloud policy enforcement tools
Unified monitoring dashboards for traffic, security events, and performance
Observability platforms that collect logs, metrics, and traces across clouds
Cost-optimization software that compares and manages spend across AWS and Google
Managed service providers offering cross-cloud governance, compliance, and traffic management

For MSPs and infrastructure software vendors, studying this new spec early could help define the next generation of multicloud-native products and services.