Google admits defeat in disputed Swiss cloud tender

US technology giant Google argued that it had the capabilities to offer the cloud data services to Switzerland. Keystone / Bernd Von Jutrczenka

The Swiss federal authorities can proceed with awarding a cloud computing contract to five US and Chinese companies, including Amazon, Microsoft and Alibaba, after Google dropped an appeal against the decision to leave it out of the project.

“The appeal lodged within the framework of the procedure having been withdrawn, the work can resume,” the Federal Chancellery said in a statementExternal link on Wednesday.

Google had appealed in July against the government’s decision the previous month to name US companies Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, and Chinese firm Alibaba, as winning candidates to create a cloud-storage system for federal departments.

The contract, worth up to CHF110 million ($120 million), was awarded to the firms largely due to the “attractive” prices proposed, federal authorities said at the time.

In its latest statement the government said the “Public Clouds Confederation” project would enable the authorities to have “orderly access to the paperless services of five major providers who offer inexpensive and highly scalable infrastructure and platform services and have a wide range of new technologies and services”.

“The on-demand supply procedure guarantees efficiency for the departments and the Federal Chancellery,” it said.

The Federal Chancellery said in June it wasn’t yet clear how exactly authorities would use the cloud services and which data would be uploaded. The various providers are obliged to guarantee data security and secrecy rules, the Chancellery said.