The lock in that mattered was written into the agreement rather than built into the architecture, and more than half the contracts reviewed had no defined data extraction or transition assistance at all
Portability is an engineering problem people solve. Economic lock in is a drafting problem, and it is only solvable on the day you sign.
Prepared by Redress Compliance · August 18, 2026 · Google Cloud advisory. 20 to 30 contract reviews worked, 2024 to 2025.
Executive summary
More than half of the agreements reviewed lacked any defined data extraction or transition assistance at term end. Not a weak clause. No clause, in the document that governs how you would ever leave.
Estates committed to large data services without pricing the cost of moving that data out, which ran to 8 to 15 percent of stored value once anybody calculated it.
Committed use discounts were signed without unwind or reallocation rights, stranding spend as soon as the workload changed shape.
A clean exit path is leverage whether or not it is used. It is the thing that makes the next renewal a negotiation rather than a renewal.
What kind of lock in is this actually?
Contractual and economic, not technical. Workloads can be portable and the estate still cannot move, because commitments, egress charges and integrated services carry the switching cost. The terms sit in the Google Cloud Platform terms.
Naming it correctly matters because the defenses are different. Technical portability is an engineering choice you can make later. Economic lock in is a negotiation that has to happen before you commit.
| Form of lock in | What creates it | When it can be addressed |
|---|---|---|
| Technical | Proprietary services and managed integrations | Any time, as an architecture decision |
| Economic | Committed use discounts and their unwind terms | At signing, and effectively never after |
| Data gravity | Egress charges on accumulated data | At signing, by pricing the move before it is needed |
| Procedural | Absent extraction and transition assistance clauses | At signing, because nobody grants them at exit |
The three defenses are not interchangeable
Engineering around a managed service does nothing about a commitment with no unwind right. Buyers who treat lock in as one problem usually solve the one that was never holding them.
Why does egress decide the real cost of leaving?
Because it prices the one action an exit requires. Moving accumulated data out is charged per gigabyte on the published network pricing, and the total scales with everything the estate has stored since it arrived.
Across the reviews worked, estates committed to large data services without ever pricing that move. When it was calculated it ran to 8 to 15 percent of stored value, which is a number that changes an exit decision on its own.
Data gravity is not a metaphor here, it is a line item. Every month the estate stores more, the cost of leaving rises, and nothing in the billing surfaces that as a growing liability.
The Google Cloud contract terms brief
Exit rights, extraction and transition assistance, commitment unwind language, and the egress arithmetic that decides what leaving actually costs.
Get the brief →What 20 to 30 Google Cloud contract reviews showed
Across roughly 20 to 30 Google Cloud contract reviews Morten Andersen worked between 2024 and 2025, the lock in that mattered was written into the agreement rather than built into the architecture.
Egress blindness came first. Estates committed to large data services without pricing the cost of moving that data out, which ran 8 to 15 percent of stored value when it was finally calculated.
Commitment rigidity came second. Committed use discounts were signed without unwind or reallocation rights, so spend stranded as soon as the workload moved to a different machine family or region.
The third pattern is the one worth the headline. More than half of the agreements carried no defined data extraction or transition assistance at term end. Not a weak clause, an absent one.
None of the three is discovered at exit. All three are decided in a document signed years earlier by people who were negotiating a rate. The commit structure itself is worked in our brief on the commit and egress benchmark.
- Percentile standing for your exact deal size and industry, from real closed transactions
- Extraction, transition assistance and unwind clauses checked across the whole agreement
- Replacement language for the clauses the first draft leaves out
How should a commitment be written so it can move?
With unwind and reallocation rights attached to it, agreed at the same time as the discount. A committed use discount lowers the rate and trades flexibility, so the terms governing that trade matter as much as the percentage.
- Ask for reallocation across machine families and regions, because that is where workloads actually move.
- Define what happens to unused commitment, rather than discovering the answer in the final year.
- Tie the commitment term to the exit clause, so the two documents describe the same relationship.
Regulation is moving the egress half
The EU Data Act pushes providers toward reduced switching charges, which changes the economics of the data gravity argument over time. It does not write your extraction clause for you.
What does a real exit clause contain?
Data extraction in a usable format, transition assistance with defined effort, and a timetable that survives the end of the term. Anything less is a statement of goodwill rather than a right.
These are obtainable at signing and close to impossible to add later, which is the whole reason more than half the reviewed agreements did not have them. Nobody grants an exit right to a customer who is already leaving.
The wider commercial position is worked in our brief on negotiating with Google, and the contract negotiation service runs the exit terms alongside the rate.
The clause pays even if it is never used
An estate that can credibly cost its own departure negotiates differently. The clause is the cheapest form of leverage available, because it costs nothing at signature and it changes every conversation afterwards.
What the reviews measured, 2024 to 2025
Two cuts of the engagement file frame what is missing from the paper.
No defined data extraction and no transition assistance at term end, across the reviews worked.
The unpriced egress cost of an exit, calculated on estates that had committed to large data services without it.
The same pattern shows up across the other hyperscalers, worked in our brief on AWS egress, which is engineered pricing rather than a law of physics.
Watch the briefing · 5:44Google Cloud NegotiationsWhere the leverage sits in a Google Cloud agreement, and which parts of it evaporate on signature.
Your first five moves
- Price your own exit before you sign, because egress ran 8 to 15 percent of stored value in estates that had never calculated it.
- Demand a data extraction clause with a usable format and a timetable, which more than half the reviewed agreements simply did not contain.
- Attach unwind and reallocation rights to the commitment, negotiated at the same moment as the discount rather than after it.
- Separate technical portability from economic lock in in your own planning, since only one of the two can be fixed later.
- Keep the exit path current even if you never use it. The Google Cloud practice writes the exit terms into the first agreement, which is the only version that is cheap.
Frequently asked questions
Is Google Cloud lock in technical?
Mostly not. Across the reviews worked, the lock in that mattered was contractual and economic: commitments, egress charges and absent exit clauses rather than proprietary code.
How many agreements lack an exit clause?
More than half of those reviewed had no defined data extraction or transition assistance at term end. Not a weak clause, an absent one.
What does moving the data actually cost?
Between 8 and 15 percent of stored value in the estates where it was finally calculated, charged per gigabyte against published network pricing.
Can exit rights be added later?
Practically no. They are obtainable at signing and close to impossible afterwards, because nobody grants an exit right to a customer who is already leaving.
What is wrong with a committed use discount?
Nothing, provided it carries unwind and reallocation rights. Those reviewed without them stranded spend as soon as the workload changed machine family or region.
Does the EU Data Act solve this?
It pushes providers toward reduced switching charges, which changes the egress economics over time. It does not write your extraction clause, and it does not unwind your commitment.
Is an exit clause worth having if we never leave?
Yes. An estate that can credibly cost its own departure negotiates differently, which is what turns the next renewal into a real negotiation.
What should a data extraction clause specify?
A usable format, a defined level of transition assistance, and a timetable that survives the end of the term. Anything less is goodwill rather than a right.
Where does data gravity come from?
Accumulated storage. Every month the estate stores more, the cost of leaving rises, and nothing in the billing presents that as a growing liability.
What is the first thing to do on an existing agreement?
Read it for what is missing rather than what is wrong. The absent extraction clause is harder to see than a bad one, and it is the more expensive of the two.