Moving to Google Cloud
Table of Contents
We are excited to announce that we have started using the Google Cloud platform to host part of our infrastructure. We are constantly researching possible new data center options so that we can offer the newest technologies and the highest level of speed and reliability at convenient geographical locations to our clients. During the last year, we have explored services provided by the biggest cloud providers to evaluate who could meet our needs best and the Google Cloud platform stood out. The first Google Cloud locations, which we already use, are in Iowa, USA; Eemshaven, Netherlands; London, UK; and Singapore. All of our new customers get activated in these locations and we have started to move some of the existing US and European customers too.
What are the advantages of Google Cloud?
Easier scaling and resource management
Our hosting platform has been thriving on bare metal for 15 years. We have always done an excellent job in minimizing the risk for our sites’ uptime by providing resources and equipment redundancy, keeping backups, and optimizing our restore processes. We believe that this quest is easier on the Google Cloud environment, where our infrastructure is built on top of virtual machines, instead of bare metal servers. Launching a new virtual machine is a much faster and efficient process. Scaling resources such as CPU, RAM, and storage is also much easier. This allows us to achieve the results we are looking for with much less investment in idle resources and management overhead.
Distributed storage for high data redundancy
Another advantage of the cloud setup is the distributed storage. We are using Google’s SSD persistent storage, which has multiple redundancies. What this means is that your website data is not stored on a single physical machine and is not lost if the hardware on this machine fails. In the cloud setup, in the rare occasions where the hosting server fails, we can just spin up a new virtual machine on another hosting node in our cloud space and simply attach the distributed storage volume to the new instance, instead of the faulty one, without losing time in backup restores.
State-of-the-art network for faster sites
Google is known for maintaining one of the fastest and most powerful networks, which means that using their service will result in high speed for our clients’ websites. One can also hardly think of another global network that is better maintained. We see this as a great advantage, as in general network connectivity problems are among the top reasons for server downtime. With the Google network, the risk of such issues is further minimized.
Multiple opportunities for new data center locations
Working with Google Cloud gives us the opportunity to quickly add new locations outside the regions we currently operate. We have started with the regions that the majority of our customers are hosted — the USA and continental Europe. Stay tuned to find out what our next location is going to be.
100% match with renewable energy
Another thing that we consider as a very important advantage is our mutual commitment to sustainability. Google matches 100% of the energy consumed by their global operations with renewable energy and maintains a commitment to carbon neutrality. This includes Google’s data centers and Google Cloud. Google has been a leader in energy efficiency with their achievements in reducing the compute emissions by improving higher efficiency of data serving and storage and diverting waste.
We are truly excited about the official start of our cooperation with Google and will be keeping you updated on its development, whenever a new location is added or any old location is being transferred to the new Google Cloud data centers.
©2018 Google LLC All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of Google LLC.
Comments ( 244 )
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Ovidiu
This is great! As a happy customer of almost 2 years, when should I expect the move to the Google Cloud Platform? I understand that all new accounts are using it by default, but the article doesn't mention anything about the existing customers. Thank you
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
A big part of our existing customers from Europe and USA have been already migrated to Google Cloud. If you have received an email from us about account server migration in the last few months your account should already be on Google cloud. If you have not received such an email you are probably not moved yet.
Liew
Would you share the Google Cloud technology used? Is it K8s or LXD?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We use Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to provision virtual machines on top of which we deploy our own implementation of Linux Containers (LXD).
Simon
This is amazing news! I use a SiteGround custom cloud setup for my sites and client sites in a UK data centre. I've still not been migrated to the new SiteGround UI, when will I be moved to the new UI and now, more importantly, the new hosting platform? I assume we are going to see website load speeds instantly improve with this move? ( I understand this will vary from site to site ) Are there going to be pricing changes as a result?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Those are two completely different migrations. You will receive an email once your servers are scheduled for the migration to the new Site Tools system. As for the migration to Google Cloud, your accounts should already be there :) Last but not least to address your question about pricing, I am not aware for any plans to increace plans because of the infrastructure improvements we're doing. Of course, there can always be price changes but not as a direct result of this migration.
Suresh
how can we tell if our sites are on the google cloud system?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
If your account has been activated recently, it is on google cloud. If it is older than several mounts, but you have received a mail recently for server move you are also on Google Cloud. otherwise you may not be moved yet. In this case, we will inform you via mail when a migration is scheduled.
Simon
Hi Hristo, I use custom nameservers so how do I tell if I've moved? Also, are you using Google's latest C2 platform and is it the standard or premium tier? Big performance and latency differences between them all. Kind regards, Simon
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The easiest way is to check the nslookup your site and the server IP (the A record) will show up as part of the GC network. I wouldn't say big differences because we've always used great DCs but there should be an improvement because the Google network is considered one of the best in the world.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The most certain way would be to do a lookup of your A record which will show you that is part of the GC network :)
Johathan
Hristo, what Simon mentions in terms of performance does have a huge point. The network can be good as can be, but you did not answer the CPU question. Whether you are using C2 platform with high-clock cores or standard? For PHP applications which run single threaded the clock frequency is certainly very important.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Nothing changes in the way we handle those since we're running our software as we did before. We're now on the N1 platform and we're currently negotiating the move to N2 since it is brand new and was not available by the time we signed our contract with Google.
Suz
If we do NOT want to be with google is it possible to opt out? I have slowly begun to disengage from google products because of privacy issues and censorship concerns.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We're migrating our entire infrastructure so there won't be option to remain on our previous DC providers. This said, you're a SiteGround customers and there's nothing to worry - we got you covered :)
io
(corrected inquiry) I am concerned about censorship as well (particularly now that censorship appears to be the accepted norm [constitutions and freedom of expression around the World be dammed]). I have just started looking into creating and paying to host my own (simple) website--WordPress.org publishing tools being appealing to me (a non-coder, but, I absorb training quite rapidly). I find, 'We've got you covered', not assuring. Thus far, picking up where I left off a few years ago, I am interested in having a website that has redundancy, perhaps georedundancy, to the extent that a call, letter, or (the attempt at a ) visit from 'the powers that be' in West ideological countries will NOT automatically (if not easily) result in my website being shutdown by said 'powers', because...'reasons'. No, I do not intend to publish anything ludicrous or 'out there'. But, in the present socio-political environ, ANYTHING can be deemed 'too offensive for public consumption', 'a threat to National Security', or, simply, 'beyond what freedom of expression and the constitution [of 'x' country] allows'. So, can you elaborate on, 'We've got you covered'? Or, at the least, provision a link to such specifics in your services? Thank You.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We have strict contracts with all our infrastructure and service providers. I would recommend that you take a look at our Terms of Use agreement which specifies our Privacy policy and in which case a site might be shut down: https://www.siteground.com/terms.htm
Peter van Westen
What has happened to the USAGE STATS history? Seems like all data from before the move has just disappeared. Is there a way to get that back? So we can also monitor the change in CPU/RAM load the move causes...
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I am afraid that due to the differences in the infrastructure we had to wipe the usage stats clean and start collecting them anew. I hope that won't be much of an inconvenience for you. New data, however, is accurate and you can rely on it.
Peter van Westen
Little rant :) "Google matches 100% the energy consumed by their global operations with renewable energy" You mean they buy "green" certificates that on paper offset the energy. This whole certificate thing is one big joke done by loads of companies to sound green. It generally means they (virtually) bought a piece of rain forest that has always been there.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Although I agree this effort alone won’t stop the global warming, it’s much more than other service providers do and I think they deserve credit for this.
Kimball Rexford
I moved my sites to the SiteGround (Chicago Data Center) 8(?) years ago. I have been impressed with performance and support since day one. I often recommend SG to friends and clients. However, I'm a little leery about this change. Not for technical reasons, but for why this is happening. Before moving to SG I had been at HostGator and was very happy. They were small and provided excellent service and support. The move to Provo Utah data center marked the beginning of the end. EIG had come in and changed the goals, to what feels to me like "minimize service, maximize profits". I hope the same is not happening here at SiteGround. If ownership and management have changed I'm out of here. If anything less than the highest level of performance and support is the goal, I'm gone.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Glad that you're such a loyal customer! I can assure you that this is not the case. There is no change in the company ownership and we are doing the migration in order to improve even more the service we provide to our customers and not because we got aquired :)
Sean
Please, don't ever get acquired ;-)
Aziz Keserovic
Dobra stvar je to
Sean
I have had this burning question for a while now. When you do a 'traceroute' or 'whoishostingthis' on any of my domains it shows 'googleusercontent' or something to that effect, and not Siteground. Now I know why this is, and that is because Google owns the IP's, where previously Singlehop owned the IP's of another GoGeek I once had, in which case they appeared to be the host. My question is would you perhaps want such searches to show Siteground as the host? At least when someone visits such a blazingly fast website as mine and wants to know who the host it, they can in fact find the actual host. How could this be done, if at all?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We are using an upstream provider for our physical data centres thus the IP address resolves to the DC owner. Your hosting provider is SiteGround, no matter where the bare metal comes from. As for someone tracing your site's hosts, they will surely see the nameservers and that this IP network belongs to GC customers so it will show that it's us and that we're using GC as infrastructure provider.
Sean
Thanks Hristo, I thought as much, but having it explained in such simple clear terms has satisfied my curiosity. I find it quite fascinating how all this works. It is the way forward. Glad to be a SG client :-)
Francis Ak
This is lovely.
Asit Aithal
Will this apply to only to those customers who have a cloud hosting account? What about those who have StartUp, GrowBig or GoGeek account?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The move applies to all our hosting plans both shared and cloud.
Ivan Pjano
Will there be any changes on pricing in data storage for Cloud Hosting packages (now is 4$ for 10GB per month) are they going maybe to get lower or higher?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Pricing is a complex thing, it's not just storage - there are a lot of metrics to be considered some cheaper, others more expensive. This said, I would suggest you to monitor our blog, we will surely announce any price / feature changes here!
Dave
Without notice, you moved users data into the hands of the biggest data harvesting companies in the world. Many of us chose not to use G Cloud services, gmails or other G services, and chose to use self-hosted options, only to find out that all of our hosted data has been handed over to the BIG G. This post should not be censored
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
If you sign up for a service with Google directly as an end user, different terms may apply, but when the service is delivered by SiteGround directly as in the case of the hosting we provide, we bear responsibility in front of our clients about the privacy of their data. That is why, SiteGround and all companies part of our group have been applying the GDPR principles globally, which means we negotiate and sign strict data processing agreements with all our providers to ensure that our clients’ data is protected and our partners are not authorised to access and process any such confidential information.
Kathleen
I'm glad to hear that, Hristo. I had the same concern when I got your email today about the change.
Jennette
I gotta' agree with Dave on this one. Moving all our data to Google Cloud without advance notice is a kinda creepy Big Brother thing to do. I'm not necessarily against the move, but you should have given advance notice so people who didn't want their data stored with Google could opt out. I'm a web developer and one of my friends isn't a fan of your services. I've defended you to them as a good host, but this is definitely a ping against you. The last time something like this happened was when the post office started delivering my packages to an Amazon Hub location without my permission and I needed an Amazon account to unlock the locker and get mail that should have just been delivered to my door. It was equally creepy.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello Jennette, You are right, we should have been clear and given a strong message in advance. For what it's worth Google Cloud is just the new infrastructure provider and the contract we signed with them bound them to data privacy and confidentiality terms that they should have no business interest to violate. Also, they don't manage your data, we do. They have no admin access and no authorization to do anything with the information we put on their machines.
Robb McDobba
This isn't a very comforting nor accurate answer. Corporations can change their TOS at anytime, whenever they want. SG vs the Google behemoth = Google has all the leverage. Take this comment for example. I had to check a box granting you permission to collect and process my personal data. It was either agree to that or not comment. You really think your service agreements with G don't fall under similar do or die conditions?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello Rob, the example you provide is not applicable in this case. We did not sign up for the standard Google Cloud service where we agree to their TOS and DPA. We have a custom contract with a lot of custom clauses, which we negotiated for months. Google may have the leverage as a brand, but not when it comes to a binding contract. Contracts cannot be changed by one party only. It takes two. In such case whatever is written in the contract prevails and if they breach, there are heavy sanctions, huge legal fees, lost clients and tarnished reputation.
Alexander S. Kunz
This has nothing to do with privacy. It has everything to do with who Google is, as a company. A portion of what I pay Siteground now helps Google. I do not want that. This is really, really disappointing for all those of us who are ethically concerned about companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. etc. I will be moving my sites away from Siteground. What a disaster!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
All comments are held for moderation as a spam-prevention measure. As you can see, I am answering all of them no matter if they are “tough” questions or people happy with the move and our services. It’s not censoring your reply because of your opinion or whether you like Google as a company or not. I respect your ethical concerns as I understand large corporations usually come with big trust deficits. I can only vouch regarding the security and confidentiality of your data when it comes to the relationship that SiteGround as your provider has with Google. Everything else is a matter of personal choice.
Lora Premo
I have the same issue as the previous writer. Google represents the most invasive and insidious of all data harvesting operations and I do not use Google products for anything whatsoever, ever. No matter what it is. I gladly forgo some of their more interesting services because I do not like my privacy being violated. The GDPR has almost no teeth. What guarantees do we really have?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
The one true guarantee is the contract we signed with Google. The privacy principles that are part of the GDPR are integrated in the texts of the documents we signed, and unlike TOS or other documents, contracts cannot be changed without the consent of both parties. In case of a breach, there are heavy sanctions that follow. There is no business interest for Google to breach on the privacy terms as it has so much to lose financially and image-wise in case they do.
Ruud
Your reply will make me sleep a little bit better. I have been your client for about ten years and have no complaints. I don't trust Google and the other big 5 sisters. I think it is possible to move to an European settelment of your company, that would make sleep a lot better. I think you could have been more open about how you prefent anybody to have the option to spit in my e-mail and other things. I 'm sure that G and A etc. have good servers BUT trust in them is something else. If you see all the breeches and privacy problems they had the last 5 years then you now that they are not sheep.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We apply all GDPR rules for each one of our DC locations. At the end of the day you're a SiteGround customer and we take responsibility to protect your data as we have always done, no matter the upstream providers we use.
Allen
The elephant in the comment section is the intentional deception at play. As Dave stated there are individuals who deliberately look to avoid doing business with or having their business data pass through G services for various reasons. What does Siteground intend to do when unauthorized access to user data occurs? You stated you negotiate and sign strict agreements around "access and processing" data. Does that mean they can access but not "process" data deemed not to be "confidential"? Deferring to GDPR is weak given that Google is an American company and like most American companies they believe it to be better to apologize than to ask for permission. Its harder to imagine a quicker way of generating distrust in Siteground in this announcement.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello Allen, I understand that your ethical concerns about Google are transcendental, but I could comment only on the practical implications of the SiteGround-Google relationship. We signed up an agreement with Google for a specific service that they provide. They provide us with infrastructure. Whatever we put on top of it is not owned by them, it’s our data. Yes, they can and on some occasions they may have to access it (request from authorities for example). They cannot disclose it because it is not theirs. There is a specific clause about our clients’ data being confidential information. They cannot share, store or process for any secondary purposes. That’s just an outline of the few things they cannot do, but there are more. We have all that in writing in a contract. You are worried they won’t respect the GDPR principles because they are an American company. Well, even if they don’t respect the GDPR, they have to respect their contracts - all our contracts have the GDPR principles integrated in the texts. If they don’t respect the contract, there are financial and many other sanctions that follow. That’s the business risk and it’s present with any partner we have ever worked with or will so in the future. In my experience, corporations like Google are less likely to breach contracts and generate negative publicity, given the tremendous amount of scrutiny they get, than smaller and not-that-well-established companies. They take longer to negotiate exactly because they want to avoid liability. So the question becomes - how well we have done our job to protect our clients' interests. If you have trusted us until now when we were working with partners you hardly ever heard of because we were not actively advertising their brand names, maybe you could give us some extra credit that we will do it right this time again :)
Tom
“but when the service is delivered by SiteGround directly as in the case of the hosting we provide, we bear responsibility in front of our clients about the privacy of their data.” When the server is run by another company, who has to have admin access to operate and monitor on the boxes they own, they also have the ability, and reason to as one of the biggest data harvesting companies who no longer go by “ do no harm.” There is an obligation to your customers to inform them prior, what you plan to do with the copyrighted data they have in the servers. I think telling us we migrated your data months ago, they have it.. so deal, is a poor model. As for green, that’s the color of write offs for google $$$. Same garbage as an electric car is not polluting. It is, just from the coal/nuclear plant.. not in your back yard. People choose hosting based on price, uptime, security, and for some. Control of what Facebook, google, Apple can see.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Tom, you make a fair point and note taken regarding the notice. Just to clarify about the data access - Google has no admin access to our data. As infrastructure provider they get physical access to the machines and hard disks. Of course when there is a malicious intent there is a way. But, there is no business reason for them to do any data harvesting. I am probably not emphasizing enough how long the negotiations took exactly because of the data privacy terms. We were not settling and signing anything until we felt our clients were well protected and the custom clauses we requested were included in the text.
Eric
100% agree. While there may be technical and financial advantages to this move, Google as a company certainly no longer lives up to its old "don't be evil" motto, and we're decidedly upset that some of our hosting fees will now be forwarded to them. We're going to look for a new hosting company that doesn't "feed the beast"!
CL
I agree with Dave. I specifically chose a European host that was not using Google (or one of the other big US cloud providers). And now you just move me to Google without even giving me prior notice. Leaving me stuck with my recently renewed Go Geek account I just paid upfront. Can I cancel my account because of this move? It is a serious change in service.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Of course you may cancel your account should you choose to leave and our Customer care agents will help you out. I just want to clarify a few things about your data. For our European operations we contracted Google Ireland - this is a European entity bound by the EU laws. After the migration your data is still hosted in the EU, complying with EU laws and we are responsible for its management, not Google. Google Cloud is bound by a custom contract with SiteGround and have a list of limitations what they cannot do with your data or sanctions follow. I would like to apologize for the insufficient prior communication on the matter.
Frank
I agree with Dave on this one. Google has explicitly removed its "Do No Evil" mantra from the corporate culture and are known for privacy invasions and advertising.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
As I already commented under Dave’s post, Google Cloud is just an infrastructure provider for us and they have no authorization to access the information we upload on our servers. No matter who we use as infrastructure provider, you will be a SiteGround customer and we will take care of your privacy.
Robert
I'm with Dave on this one and currently looking at moving our services away. If I wanted to be hosted on Google Cloud then I would have signed up with them.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Sorry to hear that! I have seen that some customers are concerned about Google having access to their data, but the truth is they have no more access, nor right to access than any other infrastructure provider we have ever worked with. That’s why we negotiated terms and a contract that took more than a year to be signed. We take privacy and data security very seriously and we would never work with any partner until we are sure our clients’ information is well protected.
Ricky
Why did users not get advanced notice that their hosting accounts would be transferred to a 3rd party server, and the name of that 3rd party company? Giving users the chance to take down their sites before all of it was transferred to another company?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We have always been using upstream providers for our infrastructure and GC is just our new provider. In the past we’ve done such account/server migrations from and to SingleHop and SoftLayer for example. This is not different hence we only informed that your account will be migrated in a new data center. If your concern is about data privacy, please take a look at my comment in reply to Dave’s.
Allen
I also have the same question as Ricky and neither reply answers the question. I suspect for many users, like myself, who are concerned is not the use of a 3rd party but a particular party and service in this case GC. To be informed after the fact is a bit like telling a religious devote they've been eating food cooked in pig fat for the last 2 months.
Max
Big fan of SG. Reluctant, if extensive user of both personal and corporate Google products. All big tech have lost the ethics battle. They operate at a huge deficit of trust. Keep that in mind for future.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I get your point, loss of trust is a huge problem. I can only assure you that business-wise we’ve done everything possible to hedge against any wrong-doing and protect the data we store on Google Cloud.
Dav
Hello, That is good news. Will you be opening up a server location in Germany? I am unfortunately considering moving my account from Siteground for 2 reasons: - You have no server location in Germany to offer me which I am really requiring; - Your server response time is not as fast as other competitors in this market who charge similar monthly rates. It is a real shame that on your Go Geek package, you do not provide a slightly more bespoke package with a bit more power. Anyhow, some honest feedback.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Thank you for the feedback :) Germany is one of the new locations we are considering, but I cannot give you an ETA yet. As to your second concern, our tests show that when caching is configured properly our platform is faster than that of most of our competitors. Yet, we always want to do more and better so we are cooking some new enhancements, which you should be able to enjoy pretty soon :)
Bryn
Will SiteGround be using the premium tier of Google Cloud? Will you be using Google Cloud DNS and/or Google Cloud CDN?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
At the moment we are only using N1 as N2 was not available at the time we were negotiating the terms, but we are already in talks about N2. We are not using their CDN and DNS as we are using alternative services.
zvi
Congratultions :) My sites were moved today, and beside some minor downtime which can be expected in such a move, I already see a nice improvement in preformences.
t'
Still waiting on migration to Site Tools. You're email in September said that'd be done "over the next few weeks". This sounds great, but I don't hold out much hope of it affecting me this year.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, we had to temporary slow down migrations from cPanel to Site Tools until we complete the migration to Google Cloud. Now that this is almost over, we will step up the migration process!
David Anderson
About the migration to Site Tools, I have been told that they 'expect it to be done by the end of the year' 'Over the next few weeks' turning into over a year??
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We had to delay the migrations in order to complete the migration to Google Cloud before that. We will now continue migrating as fast as we can. Trust me, we more than anyone else want all our customers on Site Tools :)
Renato Figueiredo
Good News. Any cloud server located in Brazil (Sao Paulo) ? Can I move to that site ?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Glad you like the move to Google :) We will announce shortly which are the new locations we will open :)
Frank Okun
Great news - I am still on the "old" reseller system, however, so I'm hoping you didn't forget to swith me over!
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
No worries :) Resellers won't be forgotten :)
AVD
I have the same concern as Dave. You can sign all the papers you want saying Google is not "allowed" to touch our confidential data but I want to know to what do they really have access? If it is now hosted on their servers don't they physically have access to all information pertaining to my multiple sites/accounts? Is our information encrypted by a third party to which Google does not have access? I have been happy with your past setup, no major problems but I am NOT happy about this move and I am considering moving my accounts elsewhere.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
It doesn't matter whether it's Google, or any of the other providers we work with - data is stored in the same way. Part of it is encrypted, part of it isn't. Your website data is not for example, unless you encrypted it yourself. The thing that you are missing though is that it's not in anyone's business interest for Google to do that kind of breach. They will get some small short-term win (although it's hardly a win - given the volumes they process our data is statistically insignificant), but will lose much bigger - clients like us will leave them and we won't be the only ones. And let's not forget the legal fees, which are huge in such cases.
Cam
Thanks for the update on the migration to Google Cloud. Are there any plans to have servers in Canada? I have had to send some clients to other hosting companies as a result of new legal changes if they want to keep their data in Canada and not in the USA. I would prefer to have them using siteground.com as their support is much stronger.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Glad to hear that you like the move :) We are considering Canada, but it's just talks for now as there are specific local requirements we have to comply with.
Good hobo
Oh booy, oh boy... that sucks! Might as create the site on google sites and use google email no? :D The whole idea of the internet being free of monopoly is being destroyed business by business... any good ho! :P
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Indeed, the web space is changing and there are fewer and fewer independent data center providers. But it's hardly monopoly when it comes to the hosting service. Whether it's Google or a data center you don't recognize renting the machines to your provider, you still choose the end service provider and there are many hosts out there :)
Justin
There is no question. You guys are hands-down one of the best in the biz. Keep up the great work.
Florian
Cool! Will you offer better price/value VPS/Cloud servers? The service of siteground is outstanding but the prices are too high sadly. Shared hosting is excellent but once you go above that Siteground is sadly too expensive in comparison to other hosters :(
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
We have something in mind, but I can't disclose yet :)
Kenneth Charles Williamson
I actually didnt go with google cloud when they started, even though they were offering extremely cheap cloud hosting at the time. This kind of negates that move "non move"... so yes, i hope the pricing comes down.
Nat
We have passed on the new server this week and we are very happy, of the service no problem on the IP change. Thanks again
JJHTTE
Do you amend the DPA's with us and others to reflect the change? How can we be assured that the selected location of the data center (and the data within) stays as is?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello, in our public DPA we do not list any infrastructure providers. That list is available upon request. So we will not be updating the DPA itself, but we will update the list with sub-processors. You can be assured that your data stays in the same region where they were because SiteGround keeps managing your data, not Google. What we did was to use Google locations in the same regions where our old DCs were and move accounts within the same country/region. Clients hosted on the US servers stay in the USA, those in EU stay in EU (more specifically The Netherlands and the UK as they were before).
Mark Reddington
So since "scalability" is easier, does that mean I'll finally be able to purchase additional storage without having to upgrade to the next plan?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Unfortunately, no. The shared plans and the whole server setup remains the same.
N
How do we select which country ones data can be stored in? This is a concern for me from a Export Control perspective as I deal with highly sensitive information related to my clients.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
You can choose a DC during the sign-up process for new accounts. As for the old ones, we always keep the same region when we migrate severs so the current migration should not affect you in any way regarding Export Control.
Arun
Let me know what is the status of AUSTRALIA servers? If it possible to consider GC in India! It will help us to host more sites with SG. Now i am using Cloudways and Kinsta
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
We have plans to launch a location in Australia soon, but I cannot say anything specific about India yet.
Paula
You are saying in your email: "Moving from bare-metal based data centers to a cloud provider like Google is a significant change." This really made me wonder: What are these Google-servers 'Clouds' made of, if it isn't metal? Thin air? ;-D
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Fair enough :) We were highlighting the difference before cloud and on the cloud - before cloud we were putting our software on top of individual physical machine, while now we use virtual machines, configured in the cloud and then we put our software. Of course, the cloud itself consists of numerous physical machines whose resources become a large pool of CPU, RAM and space.
Juan de Jesus
It is a super news!!! Now i have a little worry. What's the possibility to know the day i will be migrated at least 3 days before? I ask it because i have many clients and in case the service can turn slower or data loss i preffer to block users that day. Is that possible? Thanks Hristo!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We do our migrations in the least busy hours of the day for the servers. Usually, there’s minimal to no downtime included in this process. Actually, most of your accounts are already running on the Google Cloud platform. We mail customers when DNS changes are required and we give you a list of domains to be redirected.
Bob Keeton
This is NOT why I signed up with SiteGround. I want nothing to do with a company running on the un-American ethics Google has embraced. To me, this is a sell-out of SiteGround's customers and I am very, very discouraged by this unannounced, unanticipated action. How about offering a choice? I'll take the "bare-metal" service. It has performed extremely well for me in the past and I'm very happy with customer support that can lay hands on code and servers to effect changes.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I am sorry that you feel this way, Bob. I want to assure you however, that Google Cloud has nothing to do with their search engine or other branches of Google that are often related to such practices one way or another. We have strict contracts with them and they do not have access to the data we host on their infrastructure. We're just switching one data centre to another, we're not sharing your data with anyone. As to the technology, we run the same virtualisation we've been perfecting for years on the new infrastructure so you shouldn't worry about that either. The service you're getting will only get faster and safer!
Mel Savage
Forgive me if this is a rookie question, but does this mean I can load videos into my site vs. storing them on a 3rd party platform like Vimeo? I'm assuming no. I use Vimeo right now to avoid slow loading times. But I'd love your thoughts
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I would still recommend storing videos on platforms speciffically designed for that and embedding them. As for the loading times - check out the latest update of the SG Optimizer. We now provide Lazy Loading for videos too which works great for sites with videos in them!
marwan elmashal
I think the future of hosting is here
Glen Kohler
Dear Hristo & Company— I am a long-time SiteGround subscriber who has been entirely satisfied with the account terms, transmission speeds, and support services. Like some correspondants above, I too stay as far from Google as is practical, because of the company's data collection practices and its seemingly authoritarian and autocratic operating philosophy. I would have preferred SiteGround to have advised me of their intention to transfer my files Google's servers sufficiently ahead of the event to allow me time to decide if I wanted to go with them. Sincerely, Glen Kohler
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello Glen, I would like to apologize for the insufficient prior communication on the matter. Your comment is noted and we'll make adjustments for the rest of the customers with upcoming migrations. I would like to point out a few things that are important when it comes to data privacy. The Google company that collects data and is using it for advertising purposes is a different entity from Google Cloud, with which we are working. We took many months to negotiate our contract with Google, explicitly requesting custom clauses that protect our client data and put limitations on what Google Cloud can do and what cannot do. You can rest assured that we have done our job well and your data is safe from any unauthorised usage.
Gustavo
Hi, Would you have a estimate date to have a server in Brazil?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Sorry, we are not looking into this location yet so we cannot give any ETA.
Brian R. Walton
Does this have any effect on Cloudflare as your CDN?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
No, our integration with Cloudflare remains the same :)
Damien
Does this mean our site will have better DDOS protection? We did get brought down by DDOS attacks while hosted on SiteGround.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, we do have a state of the art DDoS protection on our infrastructure that will try to mitigate such attacks.
Marie
I am concerned regarding the GDPR here in Europe. For me it is important that the data will not be transferred outside the EU. How can that be assured if the hosting is provided by Google Cloud???
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Please imagine Google Cloud only as a data center, actually a company with many data centers and many servers. SiteGround is the company that manages your data and we have full control on which servers and in which data centers it is stored. European clients, unless they specifically requested otherwise, are hosted in Google's European facility. US clients' data gets hosted in Google's US-based facilities, etc. Your data will not be exported outside the EU.
Patrick Kilhenny
I got an email from SiteGround at few weeks or more back about some change coming and I assume this is what it was ll about. Was there something that I am supposed to do as the owner of a website once this work or change over you are doing is done? I believe I saw there was something for me to do, I but could not understand what it was to do or how to do it. Please provide some detail about what I need to do, if anything.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello Patrick, If you are using external domains on our platform, you need to update their records to point them to the new IP. It is best to refer to the email we have sent you after the migration, where we gave you a list of all domains that require your consideration, or come to our Helpdesk and one of our agents will walk you through what needs to be done.
Patrick Kilhenny
Thanks Renata. Big Help, I will go to the help desk.
Jim
This not welcome news. If I wanted to host my data on Google hardware I would have done so years ago. I understand that this was likely a pure dollars and cents business decision, but I suspect you didn’t fully account for the value of existing customer trust and goodwill. Disappointing.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Very sorry to see that you don’t like the new platform. The move to Google is not about cost savings as moving to the cloud is more expensive overall, whether to Google or to any of the other big providers. It’s more about the resources we get and the management efficiency that guarantees better service at the end of the day for our clients.
Nas
Are you guys moving all of your Hosting Plans to Google Cloud or just Shared & Managed Ones? Don't you guys have your own Cloud Hosting Service, What's the Future of your own Cloud Hosting?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We use Google Cloud as infrastructure provider for all our products both shared and cloud. Our software runs on top of their DC keeping all our products.
Bill
We had some serious traffic anomalies, and I suspect it was related to the move. How do we find out the date our account was moved to Google?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The migration shouldn't cause such issues. Please, concact our support team by posting a ticket in your Help Desk to get additional assistance and information on when your account was migrated to GC if that's the case.
Charles Hildebrant
I've been with SiteGround since August 2007. My favourite part of the service is the technical support. The tech staff is very, very knowledgeable and answers come usually within minutes. I hope this will continue. Please keep your tech staff; they are the best. Cheers Charkes
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thank you for the kind words, I will pass them on to the team! I can assure you that we're keeping everyone and actually training more people to join our support team!
Mike
What impact does this have on GDPR? According to SiteGround, my DC is in the Netherlands as it should be but IP lookup points to Google. Is my data still stored within the EU?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
There will be no impact on GDPR. We preserve data regions so even after the migration to Google Cloud your data will be in the Netherlands, just a different city :)
Adrian Jones
Whilst it appears of benefit this is actually a disgusting retrograde step. If I wanted to go with the cloud then I would have done so. Twice before corporate changes have destroyed things.. Microsoft and Yahoo specifically. Again now you have placed my sites in the hands of as has been already mentioned the data scavengers. I trust you have a plan ready to migrate back those of us who do not wish to be forcibly downgraded. A compete lack of foresight but Siteground for as you have already outlined just limited technical gains.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello Adrian, After reading a few comments I can relate to what worries you. You imagine Google in the role of the advertising company, collecting data and using our personal information and you either say Yes to their terms, or you are out of the game. That is true for end users like me and you, but is not the case when two corporations enter into a contract as SiteGround and Google did. Google Cloud is our new infrastructure provider bound by a custom contract to comply with our data processing requirements. They are different from the company that does the advertising and collects data. Google Cloud team has no admin access to our machines, they are not authorized to collect, share, use, manage or do anything with the data we store on their servers. SiteGround is the one in control and we are the one taking responsibility for what happens with your data. In case they breach our contract and for some reason use the data in a way different from the explicitly approved one, they are heavily liable. I can assure you there is no business interest that could justify such a breach given the consequences that will follow.
Jorge
Great news! Thank you. Any updates on when you'll move existing customers to the new interface?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Actually a large part of the accounts are migrated and I believe yours is already on Google Cloud. You are welcome to come to our Helpdesk and our agents will let you know if there is anything else you need to do.
MW Mandeville
Do you have any concerns about Google's obvious proclivities toward massive social engineering and forays into mass censorship and awareness manipulation? Is it possible these tendencies could haunt your customers? What safeguards exist? Are you aware that carbon emissions are a totally bogus head trip? If you are not aware, please kindly review sun-cycles.com and surviveglobalcooling.com. May you be ever more enlightened, Michael Mandeville
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello Michael, We are sensitive and disapprove of any action created with bad intent or wrongful purpose. We do not believe Google’s practices used in other parts of their business would interfere with our particular relationship due to its specific nature and scope. The main safeguard we have for that is the contract we signed with Google Cloud. It clearly defines what they can and cannot do with the data we keep on their platform and there are heavy sanctions in case of a breach. Unfortunately, we are aware that purchasing carbon credits is an aftermath attempt to compensate for damage already caused, but in our industry, we haven’t yet met a partner that can offer a better solution. At least Google is committed to paying off 100% and do more than many other companies in this aspect.
Charles Perk
Re: SiteGround now operates on Google Cloud When I started with Siteground some years ago server perfomance was excellent, but the past months my websites are lagging terribly and now you tell me Google cloud is an improvement? Well I cannot understand all these jubilations! This change just confirms that I have to start looking for another hosting company. A shame really since your support has always been excellent.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
You can email me directly at hristo.p [at] siteground.com and I will look into your website and tell you exactly what is causing it to load slowly. The migration to GC doesn't have a negative impact on loading speeds, actually quite the contrary, your pages should load faster than before, so there should be something else that we will happily look into.
Annette Thompson
My sites must be accessible in China and China’s firewall usually blocks Google properties and applications. Will being in the Google Cloud affect my sites’ visibility in China?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
China doesn't block Google Cloud servers with their firewall but we don't really have control on what they block or not. You can use a tool like http://www.chinafirewalltest.com or similar to test if your sites are blocked or not.
Loliu
Hope you can integrate Google CDN to deliver html fast and improve ttfb. Although you current also cooperate with Cloudflare, they only provide TW node to their enterprise plan user. When client in TW is using Chunghwa Telecom, they usually get the html from USA, not HK or JP. In other words, using free cloudflare won't improve page loading speed if most uses are using Chunghwa Telecom. And Chunghwa Telecom is the biggest internet service provider, so I need to deploy other CDN instead of cloudflare. The cdn I use can not cache html, only image, css and so on.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We're looking into providing an easy integration with Google CDN but I can't give you an ETA on when that will be available at the moment.
Steve
I moved our sites to siteground Singapore because hostpapa moved all their hosting to Canada making access from Australia painfully slow, all Google equipment is in the US so how will this affect AU access? And If your moving to GC why don't we all just buy from GC ?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello Steve, Google has many data centers around the world and when we make a switch, we keep the clients' data in the same region where it was initially located. We will not be moving your data from Singapore to the US - it will remain in Singapore (in Google's DC) and you should not worry about slow connectivity. As to your second question - by default Google Cloud service is not tailored to the needs of end users. This means that should you choose to sign up with them directly, there will be a lot of server administration work for you, which is where we step in. We take Google's virtual machines and put our software on top of it, add interfaces, and maintain all that. We add service value on top of Google's infrastructure service.
PP
Is there any chance that the websites hosting in Siteground will be blocked in Mainland China after such changes? You know, China is blocking everything from Google...
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Google Cloud is not the same as the Google Search and it's not blocked in China by default. However, you can use one of the many online tools available to check if such block is placed on your particular site.
Jay
I want to move my sites to Google data center in Korea which will be set up in early this year. Is it possible to move in this year?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
We are currently looking into a limited number of new locations to open on Google's platform as we are not able to simultaneously launch service in all countries where Google has presence. You will soon hear which are the next 2-3 locations :)
Gabriel
Some of my clients are based in China, and my question is about service availability. As Google is usually blocked in this country, will the websites also be blocked there?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Note, that generally Google Cloud is not blocked in China. This said, noone but the Chinese government knows the speciffic firewall rules they apply. You should check your site with one of the many tools available (i.e. http://www.chinafirewalltest.com) whether your sites in particular are blocked.
Claudio
Hello, actually I am under the Amsterdam datacenter, but I would like to know if there is a plan to move my domains to be stored in Google Clound within Switzerland. I have multiple clients who are requesting to store in swiss data in Switzerland.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Sorry, Switzerland is not yet on our list for new locations.
Bakhtiyar
I have been a siteground customer more that 10 years. This is a great step SG did by migrating with Google Cloud. Just wanted to ask: will this include using Gmail services also?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We are already working for an easy Gmail integration but at this point I don't have an ETA when it will be available.
Pinal Dave
I am on a dedicated server. Any plans for them?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
At this point we will not migrate dedicated servers to Google Cloud.
Vic
Moved my account here a few years ago and love the service. Since Google is famous for Data mining, what is the plan for keeping our information in house?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We use Google Cloud as infrastructure provider. They don’t have any Admin access or authorisation to access the data we put on their hardware. Plus we have strict legal contracts that assure that whatever we host on their hardware won’t be accessed without authorization.
Richard Sheehan
I have paid for a year of a Grow Big, but have not been able to figure out how to log into a place to build a blog. I'll try to learn about clouds later.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Check out our Getting Started tutorial! It will help you setup your blog fast and easy!
Asela
I have been with SiteGround since 2009, as I remember. You helped me to save lot of time when I my sites were crashed. All my sites are hosted in Singapore date center. Have you moved Singapore date center yet ? Thank you
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We haven’t migrated our Singapore customers yet. You will get a notice prior the migration with detailed information on when exactly it will occur.
Nuseli
Well, this is a good news as in the loading speed improvement which is a major concern to me. Don't forget us in Africa.
Henry Auffahrt
Any reasons why you decided to go to google cloud and not to AWS (or MS Azure)?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We looked into both AWS and Alibaba but decided that going with Google Cloud would be the best decision for us and our customers.
Rich Strauss
Does this mean that SiteGround is now a step closer to HIPAA compliance? I noticed that you've removed the HIPAA Disclaimer from your terms of Service page.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Unfortunately, we are not ready to take HIPPA clients yet, but yes, certified infrastructure like Google Cloud makes it a easier to take the next step.
WL
Hi, are Hong Kong and Taiwan on your list for new locations? Google Cloud has data centers in both of them.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We will soon announce the next locations we will start providing services. I am not sure whether Hong Kong and Taiwan will be amongst the first batch of locations we make available though.
Debasis Nayak
The best part of siteground is its technical support. If you guys have taken some decision should be good for us.
Anon
I was unpleasantly surprised when I got the email. I'm not happy about this. I despise Google for all the usual reasons and it bothers me that SiteGround is using their infrastructure. In my opinion, organizations and individuals should be fighting Google, not getting in bed with them. For shame, SiteGround. You should not be proud of this. And the way you went about it by notifying users after the fact makes me suspect that you knew we wouldn't be happy about this. Google offered you features and you became a cog in their machine.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
I am very sorry that we disappointed you with this change, which only aims to improve the quality of service. We are constantly evaluating our infrastructure options and few years ago we realized that the big cloud providers have much to offer to service providers like us. So we started evaluating all of the big ones and as we have complicated technical requirements it was a matter of negotiations who would be able to accommodate us in the smoothest and most efficient way. We definitely do not feel like a cog in anyone's machine, but like an enterprise client who has their special needs and rights.
Michael Wing
Good News, I am just wondering will this offer all of the features Google Cloud offers, I am looking to backup my sites to my Synology NAS drive too, so was wondering if I will then be able to set this up? Thanks!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We use Google Cloud as infrastructure provider. On top of it we run our own services as we used to with our previous provider so backups will remain the same as of now. However, we're always looking into improving our services so monitor our blog for news :)
Gerry
Considering google tracks everything how is my work secure frm their prying eyes
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We have strict data privacy clauses in our contract with Google Cloud. They don’t have admin access to your account nor are authorised to access it so you shouldn’t worry about that.
gggeek
Hello. New customer here - I literally signed up today. As owner of a small biz in the UK, I spent half a day searching for a good hosting provider for small-traffic sites that would be uk based and owned. SiteGround seemed to fit the bill, as it seems to have at least a subsidiary in the uk - my first bill came from 'SiteGround Hosting Ltd [...] Registered in England and Wales. Company Registration No: 09348602'. I am in the process of also moving the rest of websites I operate to "european based" hosting providers. Even though in the internet the notion of 'country' might seem immaterial for most purposes, there can be a lot of good reasons for choosing a provider close to where you live, from processing fees when making overseas payments, to data protection and consumer protection laws and the forum where disputes would be resolved. Imagine my surprise when, after finding out that the new IP address for my site belonged to Google. I have a few questions regarding the details of relationship of the nature of your contract with Google: 1. will I be able to specify which data-center my site will run on, ie. keep it within the eu? (this might sound weird, given that the eu is not in the eu any more, but I'd rather stay in the continent rather than not) 1b. will you put it in writing that my data will never be moved to non-eu data centers? 2. did you sign a contract with an US company? If so, they can not refuse government orders to covertly access my data, whatever your contract with them says. There have been discussions in the past for data hosted outside of the us by subsidiaries of american companies, but definitely not for us companies on us soil. Can you prove that the above is wrong? Is all of the data of SiteGround customers encrypted at rest with a key that Google can not retrieve? And what about data in-flight?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello, Thank you for choosing our service! To address your concerns: 1. Yes, you have control over the data center location - upon sign up we automatically assign you a data center based on your IP. As you say you are from the UK, your account should have been created in our London facility. You may choose to change that data center upon sign up, or later by ordering a relocation service. 1b. It is already stated in our DPA that we cannot move your data from the region. Even if we close our London facility for some reason (which we are not planning to do), we will still keep your data in the EU. In case we cannot do that, we are obligated to inform you in advance. 2. SiteGround consists of a group of companies. We have companies registered in the EU and one company registered in the USA. Our internal regulations require us to process European clients through our EU companies, while our US clients through our US entity. Our US company usually signs contracts with our American providers and partners, in this case with Google’s US entity, while our European companies sign with the European counterparts (Google Ireland). In your case, if the American government requests your data from SiteGround, they have to request it from SiteGround UK and comply with the local European regulations in order to get it. I am not sure what you mean by data in flight, but any data transfer whether it’s just an update of an entry gets transferred over TLS encryption. Data replication across our own machines is also encrypted. Personal client data that we stored is stored encrypted as the GDPR requires it (including for non-Eu clients). I hope that I have managed to explain what we do and that you should not worry about anyone accessing your data unauthorised and out of the EU regulations' scope.
Chad
Best news yet about SiteGround! I've been a customer for many years. The service has always been good and support is awesome. I have occasionally thought about moving to a cloud provider, considering AWS and Google. Now, you are on a top cloud infrastructure. Awesome! I have already seen speed improvement on my site, admin, and in the CPanel area. This is a great move!
Bryan Veloso
Will the IP addresses change after migration? I didn't receive any email yet. Are we still going to use the same cPanel login for the shared Geeky accounts?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, IP addresses will change but we will automatically update domains with NS records pointed to us. If you have a domain name pointed through A record directly, we will send you an email with the new IP address you should change. As to your other question, everything regarding your hosting service remains the same including your login URL.
Sean
I really don't know what all the fuss is about. Hristo and Reneta are being really patient and professional in assuring us our data is as safe as it's always been, and I believe them, completely. If anything, I feel even better knowing my websites are being served over what is probably one of the most secure, stable and well maintained networks in the world, Google's. Better the devil you know ;-) When I signed up for a new GoGeek I raised my eyebrows when I noticed the IP belonged to 'GoogleUserContent'. So I did some further research and found the exact location in Eemshaven, The Netherlands. More digging revealed even more stats about Google data centres. Only about 1% of the entire Google workforce has access to any data centre floor. They don't do tours, period. The list goes on. Otherwise, my hosting is with Siteground. Exactly how they provide that, to be bluntly honest, I don't have time to care about such things, as long as it works. Moral of the story, I'm not going anywhere, because I've moved enough hosts now and would like to spend time developing websites. Siteground are going to have to do a lot worse than move to Google for me to even think about going anywhere else.
Nigel Morris-Cotterill, Financial Crime Risk and Compliance.
This troubles me. I do everything I can reasonably do to keep data out of the hands of google, facebook, microsoft. I am not comfortable with Google having access to private data of those we deal with. Moreover if, as this article says, Google plans to move UK users out of the GDPR regime, that is a very bad thing. One of the reasons we chose Siteground was the specific assurance that our data would be held only on servers in the UK and would be completely compliant with GDPR, thereby relieving us of a complex and expensive regulatory burden. US Data Protection is extraordinarily weak; providers such as Google impose terms that weaken it still further.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We have a strict contract with Google that doesn't allow them admin access to our servers nor unauthorized access to your data. You're a SiteGround customer and you can be sure that we will keep your data safe, no matter which infrastructure provider we will use. As to your other question, we migrate our servers to the same geographic location so nothing will change. UK leaving the European Union is a political change that we have no control over. If you want your account to be hosted on our EU data centers, you can request a relocation from your Client Area and move to our DC in The Netherlands.
Nigel Morris-Cotterill, Financial Crime Risk and Compliance.
What has been the effect of Google's recent announcement and immediate implementation of the transfer of the legal regime of all its UK users to US terms?
Nigel Morris-Cotterill, Financial Crime Risk and Compliance.
Addendum: I think you misunderstood the GDPR point - there is next to no chance that the UK will leave GDPR now. Note that the UK will not be bound to accept changes to the regime in the future. My question was whether ALL of our data, including our data which Siteground UK holds about us, would remain in the UK and therefore subject to GDPR. It might have been better if I had substituted "the EU" for "the UK" because the question of ANY data being migrated to the USA is live for all EU customers.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello, as Hristo is off, I would like to address your comment. Your concern regarding Google's choice to move the data of the UK users to the USA has no relevance to our case. The data they chose to migrate to the USA is data processed by Google and provided directly to Google as per owners' permission. The data you provided to SiteGround UK - personal contact information and your website data is processed by SiteGround UK and not Google. That means we have control over who and how accesses that data, where it is stored and that's why Hristo refers to the contracts with our partners and how they have to comply with the terms of these contracts besides the laws. Thus whether or not the GDPR is residing becomes irrelevant as our contract requires compliance to the same terms. Still, the data you provided to SiteGround UK - it will remain in the UK, hosted on Google's UK-based infrastructure (assuming you chose London as your data center location). On Google's side, we have a contract with Google Ireland for the provision of that infrastructure, which makes the infrastructure provider both abide by the GDPR regulations (as Ireland is in the EU) and liable for the terms in our contract that expect the same compliance.
Nigel Morris-Cotterill, Financial Crime Risk and Compliance.
Thanks, Reneta. That's the first time I have seen a completely unequivocal statement on this difficult subject. There's been lots of dancing around it but nothing so clear. If it helps Siteground to understand the problems we users are having with this, the following article will help explain the risks that we are all so concerned about: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/credit-cards-addresses-and-phone-numbers-vulnerable-more-than-one-million-energy-customers-privacy-at-risk-20200228-p545bw.html Yes, there's an ethical problem with Google, there's a legal and risk problem with anything under the control of a US company (but we've all accepted that because Siteground is a US headquartered group and the long-arm of US law enforcement has no problems getting down the legs of that particular octopus - and in any case, we all accept traffic passing through Cloudflare which we regularly report as providing services to criminal enterprises). Those are not the immediate risks - it's our own data protection agencies, across the world, that are the far more urgent questions. Reneta's reply addresses that with clarity. Thank you.
Ivan Roca
Hi, moving to Google Cloud can make problems for the visitors inside of China?
Ivan Roca
I just read the answers to a similar question. I got it. Thank you!
Ben
Will that have any effect on the website Load Time? Right know your servers are standing on 2-3sec.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The loading time of your site depends mostly on the way you've developed it and the networking latency between the server and the browser / tool loading it. If you're loading your sites for 2-3 seconds I'd recommend checking the PHP version you're using and if you have our Dynamic cachiing enabled. As to our migration to Google Cloud, they have probably the best networking in the world plus the best hardware powering it so loading times should be better overall.
Eric_FL
I generate my web pages locally and then upload to SiteGround server via FTP client software. Currently using us157.siteground.us for the FTP host address. Will there be any changes to that address?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
No, the hostname will remain the same, it will just point to a different IP address. We've done everything possible to keep all hostname identical and only a handful of them will be changed and the users affected - notified.
Gerald
This is great news! I like the tools and services that Google provides. I buy all my domain names from Google. My business phone service is powered by Google Cloud and now, my website too?! I guess it’s safe to say that my entire business runs on Google. I have no complaints.
whuhoo
You have stressed repeatedly above that Google will not have access to our *data*. Okay, I'll accept that--they will not have access to my *account details*. But what I haven't seen addressed is Google *tracking*. Tracking browsing history is Google's bread and butter. I cannot imagine Google will not be tracking browsing trails if they're on their own servers. So, a simple yes or no answer: Will Google be *tracking* browser activity relating to my account which is now handled on their server?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Tracking browser activity happens either from the browser itself sending data or from JS files loaded on the websites you visit. It has nothing to do with your hosting provider and the server setup we have. The switch won't have any effect on the way Google track your browser activity if they do.
Rich Roth
Are there any FAQ about details on a migration for a GoGeek account ? I am specifically concerned that the whole directory tree and database references (on localhost) will be the same - not just the public_html as I have various developmental or prior history in the user (~) tree. And most of my sites are not using standard SiteGround installs (mostly WP). Are you migrating an existing container so all these will effectively not change ? Please advise.
Rich Roth
Forgot to add - the IP of set in expernal DNS does not have a host name, and is also used by SSH -- how is that to be handled on the migration - for example, the SSH access keys are in ~/.ssh And FAQ addressing all these would be good
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
That would require you to clear the known hosts probably since they will start pointing to a new IP address. We won't change hosts unless absolutelly necessary so that shouldn't be a problem either.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We migrate entire servers, not separate accounts. Furthermore, we keep our software running on top of the GC infrastructure so for customer's stand point of view nothing really changes but the servers IP.
Salman
Due to sanctions people in some countries can not use Google cloud service and they can not access their website. I think it is a good option to have some non-Google servers for thos who do not prefer Google.
Salman
All in All I am not happy with this decision. Because of privacy concerns and problems that we have accessing our websites. I am a web developer based in Tehran and I always recommended my clients to use Siteground. Currently I am supporting more than 10 websites on Siteground belonging to my clients.After migration to Google cloud and due to sanctions we could not open our website. I contacted you and you said that if we activate Cloudflare the problem is solved. But our government banned Cloudflare and that does not solve our problem. we already started the migration to another hosts. We really enjoyed using Siteground services. I think it was good if you leave an option for those who have privacy concerns about using Google servers and those who live in countries under US sanction to wheter stay in Siteground Servers or not. Regards
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello Salman, Unfortunately, as you know, the sanctions against Iran affect all US businesses working with Iran so not just Google, but all our data center partners should be imposing them as well. On our order we also do not accept clients from Iran due to the same restrictions. That is why we have no solid remedy for your situation. We can only offer a refund on your account as we cannot deliver service.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We will be moving our entire infrastructure over to GC and I am afraid this won't be an option.
Scott
I agree Salman, SiteGround should have continued to offered non Google hosting. I'm in Australia and the last thing I need is my data taken by Google. I will be moving my sites to a new host shortly... what a hassel, and I had only just set them up a few months ago! SiteGround was great and the customer service was excellent... but now I need to move again to get away from the beast.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
There is no difference between our previous provider and GCP except for the better hardware and connectivity. As I've mentioned numerous times in the comments section, you're a SiteGround customer and that won't change no matter which infrastructure provider we select to work with.
JG
Will this have an effect on using CDNs like Cloudflare? ie since it will be distributed on Google's servers a CDN will not be needed? Or is there a Google CDN?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Your CDN configuration should remain the same. We are not making any changes on that regard so you can continue using the preferred CDN.
Menno
Congrats. Does this mean that the "Amsterdam" server(s) location will now show the Dutch Flag in ip-tracing-apps/addons, instead of Bulgaria? Will there be a Swiss option soon? Thank you.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Thank you :) Yes, your IP location will be Amsterdam. Our current IPs should also show the Dutch flag, but there are various geoIP data bases that instead of showing the announced IP location, show the owner's address. As to Switzerland, we are not yet looking into this location.
Lautrivta
Our SG Google GCP IPs are showing US flag? Would be great if this could be changed.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Google owns the IPs and your seem to be registered at their US company. They distribute them in a way over which we have no influence. We'll make a request, but it's very unlikely that we get that changed. Sorry!
SH.S
May this give rise to complications regarding DSGVO? I was happy to hear, that all my Data are located in europe.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
It shouldn't because the data of our European clients are still hosted in Europe - in Google Cloud European facilities and we have a contract with Google Ireland for that EU-based infrastructure. This means that both SiteGround as your service provider and Google Cloud as the infrastructure provider comply with the EU GDPR regulations.
Fernando Saling
Speaking so much in the cloud (from Google), I take this opportunity to suggest: have an intermediate plan between GoGeek and Entry Cloud, something like 1 Core, 2GB of memory and disk space to choose from. As for the move to the cloud, I still don't know what to say. It seems that the sites are a little slower.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We're working on filling that "gap" :) Monitor our blog, I hope that very soon there will be good news on that front!
Paolo
I read a good part of the comments and I got quite a headache. I only hope that this migration on Google will keep my data safe and that the high quality of Siteground's service will not be compromised. See you soon
Sorrel
I would also like to see Google CDN integrated. I would use Cloudflare, but they require a www-domain. I'm not ruining my SEO just to rename my domain from a non-www domain. Google CDN would be a nice integration to Siteground.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We're considering it but I am afraid I can't provide you with an ETA when it will be available for out-of-the-box integration in Site Tools. Meanwhile, you can manually get a Google CDN account and use it with your site.
Daniel
4+ years with SG. Not a friend of Google, as others have already stated, but I understand the move to the cloud. It’s just so much easier to maintain. I would have preferred a Rackspace or IBM etc though. Please don’t change the email setup with Spamexperts etc., a forced gmail use would be really disappointing. Spamexperts has one of the best spam filters I experienced to date. i will need to do some testing regarding the site speed. As others stated before, this should have been announced to customers ahead of time.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
We are not going to force Gmail to our clients and removing SpamExperts is not on the table :) Point taken regarding the communication, sorry for not doing it the right way this time.
Kripesh
How will this impact the pricing and the cost? Can we expect shared hosting to get expensive? Can we expect cloud hosting to get cheaper as a result?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
At this point I am not aware of any planned price changes so you can expect prices to remain the same :)
sandy
Any update on when existing singapore data center clients will be moved to the new client area and site tools?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We've already migrated our customers from Singapore to the new Client Area. As to Site Tools you will receive an email notice once your server is scheduled.
Catalin King
After you migrated to google cloud, my website loading time TRIPLED! It wasn't a fast website before due to its complicated content, but now... I can't even. TRIPLED! If I analyze it with Google, I get 1% loading time. What does the support say? Well, they say that my website it's not optimized. So...yesterday...I had an optimized website, and today It got deoptimized? I blame myself, If I only knew that you were going to migrate to a cloud server, I would have started searching for a new provider a long time ago.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The new infrastructure is faster, with better networking and more powerful. Unfortunatelly, server migration is a complicated process and requires additional tasks to be completed like syncing our backups, etc. This leads to temporary increase in the server load right after the migration. Please, give it a day or two, once all post-migration scripts are over your sites will be faster than ever!
MS
Is there any reason since moving to a Google server plugins like Wordfence would struggle with proper IP detection? Seeing several support posts starting to popup around the internet and they are all SiteGround customers so there has to be something to that. Wordfence says it's a configuration issue that SiteGround is aware of. Could you explain?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
In order to prevent any downtime caused by the migration, there's an IP forwarder in place so domains, pointed via A record to our servers have time to fix their DNS settings. It is a false-positive warning by Wordfence that you can simply ignore.
MS
" there's an IP forwarder in place so domains, pointed via A record to our servers have time to fix their DNS settings. " If someone has successfully updated their A record, how does this IP forwarder that causes the issue get removed or turned off? Automatically, manually?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Whether the redirect exists or not should not matter because people will be accessing your domain on the actual, new IP address. We will keep those redirects as long as possible since we try to contact people multiple times to update their records. I can't give you an exact timeframe for your particular IP address.
MS
In our case the A record was moved successfully 4 days ago. It seems the other redirect caused an issue with Wordfence. So my question again is when does your other redirect get turned off? None of yur escalation team seems to be able to answer this.
MS
Was this a redirect somehow from your old server to the new Google one that was not removed in a timely fashion? Just trying to understand here and for the benefit of everyone else who runs across this warning in Wordfence.
Rich Roth
IP forwarder can cause issues with various PHP code - the forwarder resets the _SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] to the forwarder address which means any code (such as spam detecter) that uses it gets confused and thinks all traffic is from the same address. Furthermore I never got an email with the new host address AND I own all my hostnames, so had to figure out what my new IP was - it is the new REMOTE_ADDR value.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We've notified all our customers regarding the migration, please check your spam boxes, and mark messages coming from SG as not spam so you don't miss such notices in the future. If you can't find such a mail, please get in touch with our CC team through chat or ticket and my colleagues will assist you further. The IP forwarder is set only for customers that haven't pointed their NS records to us but directly through an A record and the forwarder is the only way we can ensure there is no downtime. Unfortunatelly, in some scripts this may lead to issues like the one you've described.
Rich Roth
Nope no email - checked spam etc also, I told support that there is another issue in that your new servers do not show the same IP as used to reach them - which causes issues with sites that call on outside services - such as AWS Elasticsearch.
Dimitris
Your support has always been excellent but during the last days the average response time to support tickets is 4 hours. Since the migration to Google Cloud I opened two tickets and I had to wait for hours to get support. Is there a particular reason for this? Is this related to the migration?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Some tickets require more in-depth research and take more time, there is no decrease in our response time, probably your case got escalated and takes more time. Chat is instant and the average response time of tickets is actually around 10 minutes.
Rey Cabrera
Hello, I would like to know if you are planning to add new Data Center Locations for south america. Thank you.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We will soon announce the next locations we will start providing services. At this point, I can't tell you exactly what the new locations would be.
Ale
Please, add locations for South America
Abubakr
I'm sure that SiteGround respects customer's data privacy but with this change I lost local viewers for my client that majority of them are Iranian and Google Cloud is not available there duo to U.S. sanctions. At the end I lost my client.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We always follow the international law and sometimes issues like this happen. Unfortunatelly, those sanctions cover every DC and it would be applied even if we didn't switch to Google Cloud. Thank you for your understanding.
SyberKnight
i'm a bit late to the game here, but i thought it important to toss my 2¢ in. i only got about a third of the way thru all the comments above, but so far, i echo all those with concerns. i too am "trying" to avoid all things Google (& Facebook) if i can. even started using Duck Duck Go & Start Page as search secure alternatives. i understand all your replies about contracts, terms, bare metal, etc etc. i'm not really a conspiracy theorist, but i do believe that despite what they say & what they've signed with you, if they wanted to, they can still data-mine whatever they want with nobody ever knowing. but aside from that, i agree with the others that you all really REALLY should have let us know & given us a way out if we wanted to BEFORE the move took place. i am new to SG. i searched a long time for a new hosting company and you all got the best reviews; but this makes 2 big issues for me since signing up both my personal account as well as a second company account i work for. the other issue was cPanel. having cPanel was one of the must-haves for us, and your site (at the time) was all about that. but after signing up & being told that we can use this newer custom system ya'll made instead of cPanel, was upsetting - ESPECIALLY since there are some key features missing that cPanel provided. but i digress, i know this thread isn't about that - just tacking it on as a sudo vent ;-)
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I've already mentioned this in the comments but we use Google only as infrastructure provider, so there isn't anything different in the way our content is served that should worry about. As to your other note, I'd say give Site Tools a chance and you will find it superior in terms of performance, usability and security. Yes, it will take some time to get used to the new interface but it would be worth it :)
SyberKnight
@HRISTO, thank you for your reply. i realize that you've had to repeat yourself over & over & over here, so, sorry about that. just thought it important to put in my 2¢. and, for what it's worth, i'm willing to trust you all at this point :-) regarding the other cpanel related stuff, i know this isn't really the place for that discussion, but just so you know, there are some features that i was assured Site Tools has that i relied on in Cpanel, that are not actually there. i have communicated with support about this. ✌🏼
Michael
I’m not a big fan of Google either, but Most of their products have borne the test of time. I wonder how many people who are against Google because of privacy reasons are using Microsoft products? Any huge corporation, now-a-days, is suspect. What we all need is better utilization of encryption. ?
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