Google finally launched its first Google Cloud Platform (GCP) region in Latin America on September 19. The new data center is based in the city of São Paulo and will offer up to 85% less latency for local customers and, for the first time, the option to pay for the service with local currency (link in Portuguese). As stated by Fabio Andreotti, director of Google Cloud in Brazil:
This is the first time that Google offers the option to pay in local currency in the markets where it offers GCP. [...] Any client with a Brazilian CNPJ (short for National Register of Legal Entities, in Portuguese) will receive a charge in Reais for the use of the cloud here or in another of the 11 regions of the world.
In fact, Google has been accepting payments in Brazilian Reais (BRL) since at least July 24, 2017. And due to what the company has called a "misconfiguration", every charge made since then was reduced by 37.5%.
As can be seen from the screenshot of an email sent last week by Google Cloud Platform to customers who pay in BRL, the prices charged by GCP in Brazil should have had a surcharge of +18.75%, mainly due to additional operating costs in the country. But instead, due to the "misconfiguration", GCP has applied a discount of 18.75%, for what amounts to a change of 37.5% in the price that should have had been charged.
Furthermore, Google has stated that the correct prices, with a surcharge of +18.75%, will start to be charged on November 1st, which means that the unintended discount of 37.5% would be applied for more than three months since its introduction. Fortunately for those customers who have paid less due to this glitch, the company won"t apply the surcharge retroactively.
Finally, with the addition of the Latin America region, Google Cloud Platform now accounts for 12 regions worldwide, with 36 zones, and a global network connected with 100,000 kilometers (62,137 miles) of optical fibers. But for the time being, Microsoft Azure still leads over its competitors when it comes to available regions worldwide with a total of 42 regions, as announced in August.