Google has disclosed that at least two hacker groups, FLUXROOT and PINEAPPLE, are using Google Cloud's serverless infrastructure to conduct phishing attacks. These groups have been leveraging the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of serverless computing to host phishing pages and distribute malware.

FLUXROOT has targeted Mercado Pago users by creating phishing pages to steal login credentials. This group has a history of distributing the Grandoreiro banking trojan using cloud services like Microsoft Azure and Dropbox.

PINEAPPLE has utilized Google Cloud to spread Astaroth malware, primarily targeting Brazilian users. They created malicious Google Cloud projects to host phishing pages and bypass email security measures.

Google has responded by shutting down the malicious projects and updating its Safe Browsing lists, highlighting the continuous battle between cybersecurity defenders and threat actors exploiting cloud services .

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, has announced plans to cease operations at its data centers in Australia and India. The company will shut down its Sydney facilities on September 30, 2024, while operations in Mumbai will end on July 15, 2024. This strategic move comes as Alibaba Cloud looks to enhance its investments in Southeast Asia and Mexico, signaling a shift in its global infrastructure strategy.

The decision to exit these markets follows what Alibaba Cloud describes as a "careful assessment" of its operations. The company has been notifying affected customers since December 2023, providing them with technical migration plans to transition their data and services to other Alibaba Cloud regions, such as Singapore. This move marks a significant change in Alibaba's approach to these markets, particularly surprising in the case of India, given its large and rapidly growing economy.

While Alibaba Cloud hasn't provided detailed explanations for its withdrawal from Australia and India, industry observers speculate that factors such as geopolitical tensions, competitive pressures from established cloud providers, and the company's focus on standardizing its data center designs may have played a role. As Alibaba Cloud pivots towards Southeast Asia and Mexico, it aims to capitalize on emerging opportunities, including serving Chinese manufacturers expanding into these regions.

The instances, featuring up to 32 TiB of DDR5 memory, 896 vCPUs, and 200 Gbps in network bandwidth, are powered by custom fourth-generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors (Sapphire Rapids). The U7i instances are tailored to support workloads such as SAP HANA (SAP's in-memory database), Oracle, and SQL Server, offering improvements in compute and memory performance over previous generations.

A notable use case for these mega-instances is large-scale data analytics. The increased memory and compute power allow organizations to perform complex data analyses and machine learning tasks more efficiently, reducing the time needed for data processing and model training.

In addition to databases and analytics, the U7i instances are well-suited for high-performance computing (HPC) applications. Scientific simulations, financial modeling, and other computationally intensive tasks can take advantage of the substantial resources provided by these instances, leading to faster and more accurate results.

AWS is currently promoting its own virtual machine services as a migration target for users of the VMware Cloud on AWS service, once a flagship hybrid cloud service of Amazon and VMware. A new AWS promotion named VMware Migration Accelerator (VMA) offers up to $400 in cloud credits for each virtual machine migrated to Amazon EC2 instances.

The move comes amidst rumors of changes to the VMware Cloud on AWS service and suggestions that AWS will no longer be reselling the service, and it can now only be purchased directly from VMware. These rumors are considered plausible due to the recent purchase of VMware by Broadcom and a suite of licensing changes that Broadcom enacted after the acquisition.

AWS has retired its Snowmobile service, which was introduced in 2016's re:Invent conference as a way to help customers migrate large amounts of data to the cloud using a 45-foot, 100-petabyte mobile shipping container. The service allowed clients to transfer up to an exabyte of data in under six months using 10 trucks, which would have taken 26 years with a 10Gbps connection.

However, since the introduction of Snowmobile, AWS has released more cost-effective options for data migration, such as AWS DataSync and smaller devices like Snowcone and Snowball Edge. These newer solutions have made the logistically challenging and power-hungry Snowmobile obsolete, as clients had to deal with issues like cooling, networking, parking, and security when using the service.

The decision to retire Snowmobile comes amidst cost-cutting measures implemented by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy across the company, including job cuts in AWS earlier this month. While Snowmobile garnered a lot of attention and seemed innovative at the time of its introduction, it appears it didn't get much traction with potential AWS customers.

Google Cloud's Vice President, Amit Zavery, has voiced concerns over Microsoft's strategic use of its on-premise software dominance to potentially hinder fair competition in the cloud services sector. Highlighting the issue on X, Zavery criticizes Microsoft's "Listed Provider" policy, which, according to him, results in significantly higher costs—up to five times—for customers using Microsoft products on cloud platforms other than Azure.

These remarks come in the wake of a formal antitrust complaint lodged by a consortium of cloud service providers in the European Union 16 months ago, which took aim at Microsoft's practices of bundling its services to maintain and expand its market dominance. Microsoft has since adjusted its terms in an attempt to avoid EU fines and regulations but it appears that Google still believes that Microsoft is taking advantage of its position, and still hoping regulators will force Microsoft into less favorable terms.

Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) is a desktop virtualization product which until recently has only been offered in the Microsoft Azure cloud. Now the company is bringing AVD to AzureStack HCI, the infrastructure offered by Microsoft to companies with on-premises or hybrid software infrastructure.

The move is yet another example of cloud companies internalizing that cloud migration will take time and that some workloads will remain on-prem, and offering solutions to cater to companies that don't want to make the full switch. This strategic expansion is also a savvy business move in the face of the shifting virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) market. With VMware contemplating the sale of its VDI portfolio and Citrix moving towards subscription models, Microsoft is positioning itself as a reliable and versatile player.

Egress fees, charged for data exiting a cloud environment, have faced criticism from customers and regulators for being anti-competitive, as they hinder companies' ability to switch between cloud providers. 

In a recent blog post, Google Cloud announced it will eliminate data transfer costs for companies planning to move from Google Cloud to another service. To avail this, customers must apply before ending their contract with Google Cloud. 

While Google's move has attracted considerable attention, it's not expected to significantly impact the rivalry among cloud providers. The top three cloud services - AWS, Azure, and Google - all impose substantial egress fees for data leaving their networks. Typically, these costs are incurred by companies that don't fully migrate from a cloud provider but wish to transfer some data for use in a competing service.