Dive Brief:

• Google announced yesterday that it is making pre-emptible virtual machines available to customers to enable them to use computing processing the company isn’t currently utilizing for a low cost, according to the New York Times.
• Amazon offers a similar service.
• The services benefit users that want to conduct short-term data-crunching projects but don’t want to buy supercomputers of their own.

Dive Insight:

AWS has offered this service for a while, but Google’s move into the area may increase the number of ways these resources are used and help create lower prices, reports the Times. Already, running a supercomputing task costs about one-third what it did in 2012, Jason Stowe, the chief executive of Cycle, a company that helps companies learn how to use such services, told the Times.

Google appears to also be interested in pushing its abilities in machine learning to help companies steer actual research in areas like drug discovery and financial services.

Earlier this year, A.W.S. bought a company called ClusterK. The company, which is similar to Cycle, will likely become more aggressive in helping customers learn how to use AWS supercomputing services. Companies that can take advantage of such resources for Big Data projects may find ways to gain competitive advantages.