In a bid to compete in content delivery, Google announced the general availability of Media CDN, a platform for delivering content using the same infrastructure that powers YouTube. According to Google, Media CDN has a presence in over 1300 cities across 200 countries, and is designed to ‘automate all facets of serving content’.
Video streaming accounted for 53.7% of all bandwidth traffic in the first half of 2021, according to The Global Internet Phenomena Report – an increase of 4.8% from a year ago. This increase significantly benefitted the companies selling access to CDNs (Content Delivery Networks), which are a group of servers designed to increase the delivery of web content.
The new platform by Google combines the same infrastructure as YouTube, with Google Cloud’s existing Cloud CDN portfolio. Consumers will get access to a wide range of APIs and automation tools, while playback tracking and pre-aggregated metrics will enable users to monitor performance across the complete infrastructure stack. The platform also offers integrations with Google Cloud’s operations suite and other observability tools like Grafana and ElasticSearch.
Media CDN supports the development of interactive experiences like ecosystem integrations, custom ad insertions, and platform extensibility. For instance, streaming providers can utilize the Video Stitcher API to increase monetization through integrated ad serving.
While alternative CDN vendors like Amazon Web Service, Microsoft, Fastly, and Cloudflare all offer their own CDN services, none can claim the power of the YouTube network backing their services. Unlike other media CDNs, Google’s platform offers unique benefits like delivery protocols tailored to individual users and network conditions and industry-leading offload rates. Moreover, the service is built with AI/ML to stimulate interactive experiences, such as real-time stats during sporting events and purchase links that are embedded in virtual billboards.
Ghassan Abdo, research vice president of telecoms, virtualization, and CDNs at IDC, said, “Leveraging the same infrastructure as YouTube, Google Cloud’s Media CDN combines geographic reach, API-first architecture, and integration with the Cloud operations suite. This is a transformative move that is aligned with the future of the CDN industry”.
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