Will Google's $32bn Wiz buy help it gain ground in cloud services?

Google currently lags in the cloud market, and the deal could help it expand its offerings as well as acquire new customers

On March 18, Google announced one of its largest - and perhaps the tech world’s — M&A deal: the acquisition of cloud security firm Wiz for $32 billion. The deal highlights two big trends: first, the rise and rise of cybersecurity among the client ecosystem, and second, the rise of multi-cloud adoption with artificial intelligence (AI) as a driver. 

Let’s look at the security sector and how Google gains with this acquisition. According to a report by Barracuda, in the first two months of 2025 it has detected and blocked a million phishing attacks by prominent phishing-as-a-services (PhaaS) platforms.

The Barracuda report adds that platforms that power phishing attacks are much more complex and evasive, making the attacks harder to be detected by traditional security tools. 

Neil MacDonald, vice president and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner, explained in an email response to Business Standard why the Wiz acquisition makes sense for Google. 

“There are two primary motivations for Google to acquire Wiz. First, for Google to expand its offerings targeting enterprise security buyers independent of Google Cloud Platform (GCP). For example, Google SecOps (formerly Google Chronicle) is an example of this. You don’t have to be a GCP customer to buy Google SecOps,” he said. 

Second, says MacDonald, is that the core Wiz technology can be brought natively to GCP and power the next generation of the multi-cloud security management capabilities with GCP’s SCC (secure command centre) Enterprise. “Google had already introduced multi-cloud capabilities within SCC enterprise in 2024. The acquisition of Wiz will strengthen this capability. Wiz also brings application security posture management, cloud detection and response capabilities and a workload agent to Google – none of which it had previously,” he wrote. 

Analysts believe that this acquisition could bolster Google’s cloud business, which is currently lagging AWS and Microsoft. According to Gartner’s 'IaaS Public Cloud Services Market 2023', Amazon’s market share is 39 per cent and Microsoft is at 23 per cent. However, Google, a distant third, has a market share of only 8.2 per cent. 

Wiz competes in multi-cloud security and according to Gartner market share estimates, Wiz has the largest market share of any vendor in the cloud security posture management space. 

“Google is acquiring the largest provider in a fast-growing market segment. AWS doesn’t compete in the multicloud security market. Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, Tenable and CrowdStrike will be the most significant competitors to Wiz. Microsoft is the dominant vendor in endpoint security, but it is not the dominant vendor in cloud security posture and cloud workload security,” reasons MacDonald. 

Wiz is already working with 50 per cent of Fortune 100 companies, and has so far protected 5 million cloud workloads and scanned 230 billion files. 

With AI fuelling the adoption of cloud, enterprises are looking for a secure play that is integrated to the platform. According to report, Wiz provides agentless security that basically allows companies to have as many people to maintain its security applications. 

For enterprises going on cloud, security is one of the biggest concerns. For Google, the acquisition also solves the issue of building a customer base since Wiz already works with large players. 

Pareekh Jain, founder of Pareekh Jain Consulting and ERIIT, says that within the cloud ecosystem, security is the fastest growing segment. “Google has been a laggard when it comes to the cloud. The other point is that only 40-50 per cent of workloads are on the public cloud, which means there is room for growth,” he added.