Following the example of Amazon, Google is making it easier for developers to keep tabs on their cloud deployments with a new feature that offers visibility into the resource utilization of applications running on its infrastructure. Currently in preview, Billing Export is pegged as a more convenient alternative to managing costs from the Google Cloud Console.

The tool automatically ships off usage data to a Cloud Storage bucket every 24 hours in the form of either a JSON or a CSV file, which can be retrieved directly via the service’s RESTful interface. Developers also have the choice of using GoogleCL, a popular open source command line utility for accessing the search giant’s APIs.

Google is trying to help users combat cloud sprawl, a growing phenomenon fueled by the rapid adoption of platform- and software-as-a-service solutions in IT organizations as well as lines of business. By providing insight into overprovisioning and underutilization, Billing Export makes the company’s offering that much more attractive for enterprises, while also enabling smaller customers like WebFilings to make the most out of their limited budgets.

“Billing Export is a great new feature of Google Cloud Platform. It allows us to analyze the detailed usage of all our cloud projects in one place and optimize our costs. It also gives us a great tool to monitor our applications over time and understand trends in our usage,” said Dave Tucker, director of platform development at the Los Altos-based reporting specialist.

Looking at the big picture, Google is playing catch up with AWS, which is notorious for its lack of transparency. Amazon seems intent on changing that, however, having recently introduced a service called CloudTrail for tracking API calls and configuration changes.