Trying Smarter: Google’s Strategy Ahead of Cloud Next 2025

With Google Cloud Next 2025 approaching, the tech giant has been busy. Over two days, it hosted a tightly produced UK-focused event in London and confirmed a $32 billion acquisition of cloud security firm Wiz, Google’s most-expensive purchase in its history.

The event was designed to tick national alignment boxes. It focused on trust and skilling, emphasizing UK alignment, localized investment and sectoral partnerships. Meanwhile, the acquisition was a not-so-subtle signal that Google is serious about shoring up its credibility in the enterprise cloud stack.

Individually, each announcement would’ve made headlines. Together, they represent a clear attempt to reframe Google Cloud’s position in terms of market conviction and operational credibility rather than just capability and technical innovation. This blog provides an overview of this strategic shift; for more detailed analysis, see our Insight report.

Let’s not pretend the context is subtle. Despite a technically solid and mature product suite, strong innovation credentials and significant investment in infrastructure, AI and security, Google Cloud is still widely seen as the third wheel behind Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. That perception was reinforced in January 2025, when the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority placed Google in the same category as Oracle and IBM in its assessment of the cloud market, rather than with the dominant hyperscalers.

Faced with that reality, Google appears to have shifted its messaging strategy. The event focused on themes designed to reassure: sovereignty, data residency, skilling and trust, particularly concerning the public sector and regulated industries. References to deep partnerships with BT and WPP helped illustrate adoption.

Crucially, this wasn’t a technology showcase. It was a signal to stakeholders, particularly in government and enterprise procurement, that Google intends to be seen as structurally embedded and strategically aligned. To give the company credit, it was a masterful strategy of reassurance through relevance.

The AGI Detour

But not every message landed cleanly. Although the event was well-executed, it veered into odd territory when DeepMind’s Sir Demis Hassabis began discussing artificial general intelligence (AGI) and even artificial super intelligence. Sir Hassabis’ credentials are undisputed, but the inclusion of AGI in a market-facing forum felt jarring.

Most enterprises aren’t grappling with AGI — they’re trying to figure out how to embed generative AI into workflows without breaking their data governance models. The reality is that many enterprises are still dealing with traditional infrastructure, fragmented data architectures and low AI fluency — even basic AI literacy is still catching up. In this context, discussing AGI is premature and perhaps even counterproductive as it risks undermining the more-grounded messages about immediate utility, responsible deployment, operational trust and practical adoption.

Ironically, that speculative segue set up the panel’s next theme: agent-based systems. Where AGI felt abstract, agents were presented as the next logical step in productivity tooling. These context-aware assistants will be embedded into workflows, capable of breaking down tasks, initiating task execution, planning toward outcomes and afforded limited autonomy.

Here, the conversation turned sharply conceptual again, referencing world models and multi-agent orchestration without addressing basic enterprise concerns. Who governs these systems, and how are boundaries and agent permissions set? Other challenges, such as coordination logic and error containment, remained unaddressed. What happens when multiple agents act in unintended ways? The engineering community might call it a race condition; the enterprise community might call it a reason to wait.

The absence of clarity risks undermining the very message of trust and confidence the rest of the panel sought to establish. If AGI is aspirational and agents are operational, some architectural grounding is now overdue.

Wiz: More Than a Security Acquisition

If the London event was about national alignment and trust-building, the Wiz acquisition was a harder-edged move — a direct shot at bolstering Google’s operational narrative. Wiz brings credibility in an area that has often been a weakness for hyperscalers: cloud security that is simple to deploy, easy to adopt and scalable in multicloud environments. Its rise has been driven as much by usability as technical merit, and that’s a noteworthy signal.

For Google, that’s not just a product play. It’s an attempt to recapture some of the usability ethos it once embodied — developer-first, easy to adopt and hard to ignore. Importantly, the acquisition addresses a known gap in Google Cloud’s attractiveness among enterprises. But more than that, it suggests a recognition that trust is no longer only about architecture — it’s about experience. And in an enterprise landscape where security and usability now coexist as core buying criteria, Wiz gives Google a way to credibly promote both.

In this sense, Wiz aligns well with what Google appears to want to rediscover: an identity that once stood for usability, agility and developer-first design.

There’s also a pragmatic edge. CCS Insight’s research into generative AI workflows shows that the adoption barrier isn’t always technological — it’s often about integration and how well it fits with employees’ roles. Security that simplifies rather than complicates becomes not just a feature but an enabler of strategic confidence.

There’s something neatly symbolic here. Google isn’t just acquiring capability through its purchase of Wiz — it’s borrowing momentum and the start-up agility and customer confidence that Google is still working to rebuild in enterprise settings.

Belief, Not Just Capability

All this leaves Google in a curious position as it heads into Google Cloud Next 2025. It enters the conversation with a strong portfolio, a maturing AI stack and more substantive examples of partner-driven deployments. However, perception is still catching up, especially when measured against Microsoft’s dominance in productivity and AWS’ pull in infrastructure.

The perception gap highlights more than functionality. It’s about whether Google is now seen not just as a competent provider, but as a partner with the scale, durability and integration depth to match its better-positioned rivals.

This latest round of announcements doesn’t resolve that. But it does suggest a less defensive tone and a more considered approach, less about claiming leadership and more about demonstrating commitment. The ambition is clear: Google is no longer trying to prove it can build. It’s now focused on proving that it can be believed by its partners, customers and, importantly, the market and its decision-makers, who have long asked Google to show proof as well as products.