Google Cloud Storage
Durable file storage with four price classes and rules that move data between them without anybody deciding.
Object storage
Chosen per project
Maintainable handover
Every application that accepts a file eventually needs somewhere better than the server’s disk. Object storage is that place: files are addressed by name, replicated for durability, and entirely independent of the machine running the application.
What makes Cloud Storage worth configuring carefully rather than just creating a bucket is the tiering. Standard, Nearline, Coldline and Archive differ by an order of magnitude in cost, and a lifecycle rule moves objects between them on age or access.
What we build with Cloud Storage
User uploads and generated documents
Backups and database dumps kept off the application server
Static assets fronted by Cloud CDN
Long-term retention where data must be kept but rarely read
Where it fits — and where it does not
Good fit when
Any file an application stores or serves
Archives where cost dominates
Data shared through expiring links rather than public URLs
Consider something else when
Structured data you need to query
Workloads needing filesystem semantics — Filestore fits better
What a file should cost as it ages
Storage price falls sharply with each class; retrieval price rises. Lifecycle rules pick the balance.
Standard
Read regularly, served to users.
Nearline
Read about monthly — reports, older records.
Coldline
Read about quarterly — historic data.
Archive
Kept for compliance, read almost never.
How we work with Cloud Storage
Uniform access control
Bucket-level IAM instead of per-object ACLs, so permissions are reviewable.
Signed URLs
Time-limited links for private downloads and direct uploads, leaving the bucket closed.
Lifecycle by age
Objects moved to Nearline and Coldline automatically; old versions expired.
Retention where required
Retention policies and object holds where records must be provably kept.
Our typical Cloud Storage setup
| Concern | What we use |
|---|---|
| Access | Uniform bucket-level access; public access prevention on |
| Sharing | V4 signed URLs with short expiry |
| Classes | Standard, Nearline, Coldline, Archive by lifecycle rule |
| Protection | Object versioning and soft delete retention |
| Compliance | Retention policies and holds where records are regulated |
Frequently asked questions
For a purely static site, yes — usually behind Cloud CDN with a load balancer so you get TLS on your own domain and proper caching.
Public access prevention set at the organisation or bucket level, which cannot then be overridden by an individual object permission.
Where most data is old and rarely read, it is common to see the storage line fall by more than half. The saving depends entirely on the age profile of your data, which we would measure first.
Services built with Cloud Storage
Cloud Solutions
Hosting designed around what your application actually needs, with the monitoring and backups that make it safe to rely on.
Web Application Development
Applications that run in the browser, handle real workloads and hold up when several departments depend on them at once.
Custom Software Development
Software shaped around the way your business already works, instead of a packaged product you have to reorganise around.
Software Maintenance
Keeping working systems working — including ones built by somebody else.
Tell us what you are trying to build
Describe the problem in plain language and we will tell you what it would take to solve it — the approach, the moving parts and the sensible order to build them in. No obligation either way.