Google plans to be an “innovation partner” with Evernote, the popular note-taking and productivity service that today said it will move from its own servers to Google’s cloud, said Diane Greene, senior VP of Google Cloud Platform, in an onstage interview.
“At an engagement, when we can get our engineers together, they see we’ve got everything they need,” Greene said at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference in San Francisco. “The security of Evernote’s data is paramount, and we worked to show them how they can rely on us.” Evernote, with 200 million users and five billion notes, was founded eight years ago, when there was no public cloud, Greene observed. “Now they’ll be able innovate faster in their business, with us innovating for them on the back end.”
Greene, who co-founded VMware, sounded a bit overwhelmed by Google, which hired her less than a year ago. The growth of Google Cloud Platform is “happening very quickly right now,” she said. “I actually wouldn’t mind if it slowed down a little.” Later she elaborated, “I don’t want the innovation to slow down. This is the biggest and fastest-growing thing I’ve ever seen in my career, and I’m working the hardest I’ve ever worked in my career.” When asked whether she might leave, she said she plans “to stay awhile, because I’m on a big project and I’m excited about it.”
When Google comes up against Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, it often wins because of “how we partner, engineer to engineer, and where we have equivalent products . . . we have a lot of excellence. We have all the table stakes for the enterprise.” That now includes enough security features to attract banks, she said. She declined to comment on the rumor that PayPal might move to Google’s cloud.
Google has specialized in machine learning, and “cloud computing makes machine learning possible,” Green said. Google aims to bring machine learning to every startup, because “it’s such a major advantage when you can get the insights” machine learning affords, she said. Machine learning is already better at humans at diagnosing fractures in x-rays, and as medical records become more shareable, “it will transform health care. That’s a giant, exciting area,” she said.
Google used machine learning at its own data centers to process 200 inputs, such as power use, pump cycles and air-conditioning loads, and ended up cutting their electricity consumption by 15 percent, she said.
