- Bloomberg sources say Google (GOOG,GOOGL) scrapped plans for a new major cloud service in China on concerns over political tensions and the coronavirus pandemic.
- The initiative was known as "Isolated Region" and sought to address the desires of China and other countries to control data within their borders.
- Under the initiative, the cloud service in a region would have been controlled by a third party, such as a local business or government agency.
- Google says Isolated Region was scrapped because "other approaches we were actively pursuing offered better outcomes." The company didn't specify those approaches.
- Google reportedly paused the initiative in China last year to focus on the EMEA regions, but the plug was finally pulled in May.
- Google Cloud brought in $8.9B for Alphabet last year, but the cloud platform lags behind market leaders Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.