The sentiment in Silicon Valley is that Google Cloud Platform is the underdog in a race against Amazon Web Services Inc. and Microsoft Corp.’s Azure Cloud. Journalists and analysts put their ears to the ground at Google Cloud Next 2018 and listened for the straight dope. Can we trust market share reports? Will the rankings look the same in a year or two from now?

The popular rumor that GCP has a meager 6 percent of the cloud market certainly doesn’t feel true at the conference, according to Mark Albertson, senior writer at SiliconANGLE Media Inc. “Anybody who’s been here the last couple of days wouldn’t believe that for a second,” he said, though that number does describe GCP’s market share on the infrastructure portion of the cloud.

Which metrics equate to true cloud market share in these early days? Microsoft bundles Office revenue in with cloud — but it’s obvious to some that they’re separate. “I can smell a rat somewhere in all this … in market share calculations,” said John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. “There’s a lot of sandbagging going on.”

What counts as cloud, and who has the goods to win the most customers going forward?

Albertson and Furrier, along with R “Ray” Wang, principal analyst, founder and chairman of Constellation Research Inc., and Dave Vellante, theCUBE co-host, debated these questions during the Next this week in San Francisco. They discussed Google’s progress in cloud and underground rumblings that may predict the future of the market.

AI, data and blockchain key game pieces in cloud

Before anyone sheds any tears for Google, what does nipping at the heels of the top two or three providers really look like in 2018? “If there’s any debate that Google is a cloud company — Google has a hundred billion dollars on the balance sheet. End of story,” Vellante said.

In coming years, a more granular and accurate way to measure cloud market share will emerge, Wang pointed out. “The only number that’s going to matter in the next three to five years is compute power: Who’s consuming the most compute power with their customers?” he said.

Artificial intelligence and big data — two stars of the cutting-edge tech landscape — require tons of compute, and they’re areas where Google can show its chops, Wang added.

“We are seeing a lot of customers move off of Amazon,” Wang stated. “They’re not publicly saying it. They’re starting their Google instance. They’re also on Microsoft Azure.” They may balk from partnering with a company that may become a competitor, or they may want to embrace open source more, he added.

Blockchain and cryptocurrency are other hot areas where cloud providers could differentiate themselves. Blockchain could disrupt Silicon Valley, which is why they are frightened of it at the moment, according to Wang. “I think Google was supposed to have a blockchain announcement,” he said. “I don’t know where it is. I’m waiting for it, because apparently, it is really good.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s extensive coverage of Google Cloud Next:

Photo: SiliconANGLE