Google is planning to migrate parts of YouTube away from its internal on-premise data centre infrastructure to its public cloud division, Google Cloud.

Although Google Cloud has carved a solid reputation through the years, its overall market share still languishes behind the likes of  Azure and AWS. With the cloud market continuing to expand at pace, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, the firm is therefore hoping to exploit the potential for higher revenues.

Moving parts of YouTube’s operations to Google’s own public cloud division may serve as a spark the company needs to stay competitive, according to Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian speaking with CNBC. 

Doing so would also allow the company to fight alongside the likes of AWS and Azure, with parent companies Amazon and Microsoft each moving their core services to their own public cloud divisions through the years.

“Part of evolving the cloud is having our own services use it more and more, and they are,” Kurian told the network. “Parts of YouTube are moving to Google Cloud.”

This migration will be the latest Google service to be powered by its public cloud arm, alongside its Google Workspace suite of productivity apps and services, as well as the DeepMind research division. 

YouTube, however, is one of the largest and most widely-used platforms on the internet, and migrating its operations to Google Cloud may, the company hopes, encourage other businesses to follow suit.

Google Cloud has been in a state of transition since Kurian took over from Diane Greene a couple of years ago. The division recorded losses of £4.1 billion in 2020, which were attributed to investment in new data centres, with Google Cloud intent on vastly expanding its operations in the coming years.

In 2020, the cloud giant launched four cloud regions in Indonesia, South Korea and the US, alongside another four which are set to be established in Qatar, Spain, Italy and France.