Today is a historical day in the land of CDN… kinda. Google has officially upgraded their glorified load balancing service, which was previously called a CDN to “globally distributed edge caches to accelerate content delivery for websites”. Speedchecker went on record, saying that even though it’s in beta “it’s already one of the fastest CDNs out there”. And we’re going on record, saying “Google CDN is one of the slowest CDNs out there”. Calling Google CDN one of the fastest out there is really jumping the gun, regardless of what a CDN comparison performance tool tells you.

Google Declares War on CDNs

Google has “edge caches at more than 50 sites around the world” which means “faster page loads and increased engagement.” Furthermore, Google declared war on CDNs by stating “unlike most CDNs, your site gets a single IP address that works everywhere, combining global performance with easy management – no regional DNS required”. The question we have is – what does a single IP address have anything to do with differentiation and value prop? Here’s the truth: there’s a catch to using Google CDN – it only works if you’re using Google Compute Engine. Thus, Google CDN is more like a Cloud-based ADC (Application Delivery Controller) similar to Appcito and Avi Networks without all the fancy features.