Google is teaming up with a group of Content Delivery Network (CDN) providers in order to slash bandwidth costs for its cloud infrastructure services users under a new initiative called CDN Interconnect. Google has made agreements with four CDNs that ensure customers who use CloudFlare, Fastly, Highwinds, or Level 3 CDN services together with Google Cloud Platform will see significant reductions in the cost of in-region egress traffic from their cloud environments.

As an example, Google said that if you’re using CloudFlare’s CDN to transfer files from a virtual machine in Google’s cloud to customers located in one of the regions covered by the partnership, you’ll see a big reduction in data transport costs. Essentially, the idea is to share the burden of shuttling large files around different data centers across the glove between the cloud operators and companies that serve Web content and apps.

The advantage CDNs offer is they reduce the cost of data transport and boost performance by storing frequently accessed files in the region where demand is highest. Google does the same thing with its distributed data center network, but says CDNs have a much wider reach.

At present, if a Google cloud user serves content to a customer located in a different region from where that data is stored, Google has to pay local Internet Service Providers to transfer and serve that data. This is where CDNs come in, because Google can pay them to store copies of that data in a facility that’s already on the local ISP’s network, which means Google doesn’t have to pay the ISP to serve that data every time it’s accessed.

“CDN Interconnect’s special egress pricing should encourage the best practice of regularly distributing content originating from Cloud Platform out to the edge close to your end-users,” explained Ofir Roval, product manager for Google Cloud Platform, in a blog post.

Google explained the practise of storing Web content on “the edge” of the Internet is set to become more common as netizens consume more video content and businesses come to rely on applications delivered as Web services. Demand for such content in regions away from big metros like New York and Silicon Valley is also rapidly growing, and that’s fueling the construction of new data centers in less populated parts.

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