Google Inc.’s public cloud platform has finally entered into the big time, if Gartner Inc. is to be believed.

The analyst firm has just named Google Cloud Platform as a leader in its latest Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, joining rivals Amazon Web Services Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which have had the same designation for some time.

The latest Magic Quadrant, details of which were obtained by ZDNet, is equally notable for the exclusion of a glut of companies that no longer make the grade. Gartner this year decided to raise the bar on its inclusion criteria with far more stringent requirements that narrowed the field of entrants down from 14 to just six companies this year. As a result, Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, IBM Corp. and Oracle Corp. were the only others to make the cut.

The most important new inclusion criteria Gartner stated is that it now only includes those public cloud providers that have hyperscale integrated infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service offerings, or are at least currently developing them. Gartner said it decided to do this because most of its customers’ evaluations “are currently focused on providers for strategic adoption across a broad range of use cases.”

Despite Google’s entry into the “Leaders” category, it still trails AWS and Microsoft, both of which have been sitting pretty at the top for some years. Still, Gartner heaped tons of praise on Google as it strives to catch up with its rivals, saying it is now a viable cloud option that differentiates itself from others with its excellent artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.

Gartner noted that analytics and machine learning are major selling points of GCP, with many customers making use of its BigQuery data warehouse service. However, Google didn’t come through Gartner’s assessment completely unscathed, as it was knocked for its discount policy, with many of its best promotions only available on one-year contracts. That leaves buyers vulnerable to potential price increases, while other concerns include the maturity of its partner ecosystems, Gartner said.

Gartner still has lots of love for AWS and Microsoft, however. With regard to the former, the analyst firm said it’s still the most mature enterprise public cloud provider, though it was criticized for the level of expertise needed to get the best out of it. Microsoft Azure, meanwhile, was praised for its increasing openness toward Linux and other open-source software, plus its ability to integrate with different software ecosystems.

Image: Gartner