The Year in Google Cloud — 2025

26/01/2026

In the age of AI, where a year can feel like 10 years, it's easy to forget what happened last month, let alone what happened in January. To help you remember, Google has compiled data on the readership of top product and company news stories in 2025. And since Google publishes so many articles on leadership thinking and outstanding customer stories, Google has also collected that data. In short: the most popular stories largely coincide with Google's biggest announcements. But that's not always the case – there are quite a few surprises on this year's list. Read on to reflect on this eventful year, and perhaps discover a few hidden gems you may have missed.

Table of contents

January

2025 started strong with important new virtual machine offerings, foundational AI tooling, and tools for both Kubernetes and data professionals. We also launched our "How Google Does It" series, looking at the internal systems and engineering principles behind how we run a modern threat-detection pipeline. We showed developers how to get started with JAX and made AI predictions for the year ahead. Readers were excited to learn about how L’Oréal built its MLOps platform and Deutsche Börse’s pioneering work on cloud-native financial trading.

Product news

Customer stories

February

There are AI products, and then there are products enhanced by AI. This month’s top launch, Gen AI Toolbox for Databases, falls into the latter category. This was also the month readers got serious about learning, with blogs about upskilling, resources, and certifications topping the charts. The fruits of our partnership with Anthropic made an appearance in our best-read list, and engineering leaders detailed Google’s extensive efforts to optimize AI system energy consumption. Execs ate up an opinion piece about how agents will unlock insights into unstructured data (which makes up 90% of enterprises’ information assets), and digested a sobering report on AI and cybercrime. During the Mobile World Congress event, we saw considerable interest in our work with telco leaders like Vodafone Italy and Amdocs.

Product and company news:

Customer stories

March

Back when we announced it, our intent to purchase cybersecurity startup Wiz was Google’s largest deal ever, and the biggest tech deal of the year. We built on that security momentum with the launch of AI Protection. We also spread our wings to the Nordics with a new region, and announced the Gemma 3 open model on Vertex AI. Meanwhile, we explained the threat that North Korean IT workers pose to employers, gave readers a peek under the hood of the Colossus file system, and reminisced about what we’ve learned over 25 years of building data centers. Readers were interested in Levi’s approach to data and weaving it into future AI efforts, and in honor of the GDC Festival of Gaming, our AI partners shared some new perspectives on “living games.”

Product and company news:

Customer stories

April

With April came Google Cloud Next, our flagship annual conference. From Firebase Studio, Ironwood TPUs, and Google Agentspace, to Vertex AI, Cloud WAN, and Gemini 2.5, it’s hard to limit ourselves to just a few stories, there were so many bangers (for the whole list, there’s always the event recap). Meanwhile, our systems team discussed innovations to keep data center infrastructure’s thermal envelope in check. And at the RSA Conference, we unveiled our vision for the agentic security operations center of the future. On the customer front, we highlighted the startups who played a starring role at Next, and took a peek behind the curtain of The Wizard of Oz at Sphere.

Product and company news:

Customer stories

May

School was almost out, but readers got back into learning mode to get certified as generative AI leaders. You were also excited about new gen AI media models in Vertex AI, the availability of Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4. We also learned that you’re very excited to use AI to generate SQL code, and about using Cloud Run as a destination for your AI apps. We outlined the steps for building a well-defined data strategy, and showed governments how AI can actually improve their security posture. And on the customer front, we launched our “Cool Stuff Customers Built” round-ups, and ran stories from Formula E and MLB. Tổng hợp những “Sản phẩm tuyệt vời do khách hàng tạo ra”, và đăng tải các bài viết từ giải đua xe Công thức 1 và giải bóng chày nhà nghề Mỹ (MLB).

Customer stories

June

Up until this point, the promise of generative AI was largely around text and code. The launch of Veo 3 changed all that. Developers writing and deploying AI apps saw the availability of GPUs on Cloud Run as a big win, and we continued our steady drumbeat of Gemini innovation with 2.5 Flash and Flash-Lite. We also shared our thoughts on securing AI agents. And to learn how to actually build these agents, readers turned to stories about Box, the British real estate firm Schroders, and French luxury conglomerate LVMH (home of Louis Vuitton, Channel, Sephora and more).

Customer stories

July

Readers took a break from reading about AI to read about network infrastructure — the new Sol transatlantic cable, to be precise. Then it was back to AI: new video generation models in Vertex; a crucial component for building stateful, context-aware agents; and a new toolset for connecting BigQuery data to Agent Development Kit (ADK) and Multi-Cloud Protocol (MCP) environments. Developers cheered the integration between Cloud Run and Docker Compose, and executive audiences enjoyed a listicle on actionable, real-world uses for AI agents.

On the security front, we took a back-to-basics approach this month, exploring the persistence of some cloud security problems. And then, back to AI again, with our Big Sleep agent. Readers were also interested in how AI is alleviating record-keeping for nurses at HCA Healthcare, Ulta Beauty’s data warehousing and mobile record keeping initiatives, and how SmarterX migrated from Snowflake to BigQuery.

Customer stories

August

AI is compute- and energy-intensive; in a new technical paper, we released concrete numbers about our AI infrastructure’s power consumption. Then people went [nano] bananas for Gemini 2.5 Flash Image on Vertex AI, and developers got a jump on their AI projects with a wealth of technical blueprints to work from. The summer doldrums didn’t stop our security experts from tackling the serious challenge of cyber-enabled fraud. We also took a closer look at the specific agentic tools empowering workers at Wells Fargo, and how Keeta processes 11 million blockchain transactions per second with Spanner.

Customer stories

September

AI is cool tech, but how do you monetize it? One answer is the Agent Payment Protocol, or AP2. Developers and data scientists preparing for AI flocked to blogs about new Data Cloud offerings, the 2025 DORA Report, and new trainings. Executives took in our thoughts on building an agentic data strategy, and took notes on the best prompts with which to kickstart their AI usage. And because everybody is impacted by the AI era, including business leaders, we explained what it means to be “bilingual” in AI and security. Then, at Google's AI Builders Forum, startups described how Google’s AI, infrastructure, and services are supporting their growth. Not to be left out, enterprises like Target and Mr. Cooper also showed off their AI chops.

Customer stories

October

Welcome to the Gemini Enterprise era, which brings enhanced security, data control, and advanced agent capabilities to large organizations. To help you prepare, we relaunched a variety of enhancements to our learning platform, and added new commerce and security programs. And while developers versed themselves on the finer points of Veo prompts, we discussed securing the AI supply chain, building AI agents for cybersecurity and defense, and a new vision on economic threat modeling. We partnered with PayPal to enable commerce in AI chats, Germany’s Planck Institute showed how AI can help share deep scientific expertise, and DZ Bank pioneered ways to make blockchain-based finance more reliable.

Customer stories

November

Whether it was Gemini 3, Nana Banana Pro, or our seventh-generation Ironwood TPUs, this was the month that we gave enterprise customers access to all our latest and greatest AI tech. We also did a deep dive on how we built the largest-ever Kubernetes cluster, clocking in at a massive 130,000 nodes, and we announced a new collaboration with AWS to improve connectivity between clouds.

Meanwhile, we updated our findings on the adversarial misuse of AI by threat actors and on the ROI of AI for security, and executives vibed out on our piece about vibe coding. Then, just in time for the holidays, we took a look at how Mattel is using AI tools to revamp its toys, and Waze showed how it uses Memorystore to keep the holiday traffic flowing.

Customer stories

December

The year is winding down, but we still have lots to say. Early returns show that you were interested in how to mitigate the React2Shell vulnerability, support for MCP across Google services, and the early access launch of AlphaEvolve. And let’s not forget Gemini 3 Flash, which is turning heads with its high-level reasoning, plus amazing speed and a flexible cost profile.

What does this all mean for you and your future? It’s important to contextualize these technology developments, especially AI. For example, the DORA team put together a guide on how high-performing platform teams can integrate AI capabilities into their workflows, we discussed what it looks like to have an AI-ready workforce, and our Office of the CISO colleagues put out their 2026 cybersecurity predictions. More to the point (guard), you could do like Golden State Warrior Stephen Curry and turn to Gemini to analyze your game, to prepare for the year ahead. We’ll be watching on Christmas Day to see how Steph is faring with Gemini’s advice.

Customer stories