• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 17, 2016

Google's climb to support enterprise cloud storage for some of the largest companies may have become stronger Thursday with reports that it added Apple to its list of customers, with at least one analyst confirming the relationship through sources and tech users admitting to seeing signs that the two companies have some sort of working relationship.

Trip Chowdhry, managing director at Global Equities Research -- which confirmed the relationship -- said Apple will use Google's cloud services for "serverless" applications, meaning those that run for a very short time such as when someone logs in or logs out of an application or to authenticate a user. 

"It's really common knowledge in the industry," Chowdhry said, especially as the drum beats louder the closer the industry comes to Google's cloud conference next week.

Most of Apple's reliance on cloud services still resides with Amazon Web Services (AWS), but several sources told CRN, which first reported the news, that Apple would add Google to the mix.

A white paper on iOS security for iCloud released in 2014 confirms Apple's work with Amazon and Microsoft, respectively. "The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as Amazon S3 and Windows Azure," according to the white paper.

One person commenting on the 9To5Mac blog suggests Apple iCloud began using the Google Cloud Platform in mid-February. Another -- Michael Kummer, a blogger about Apple and Information technology -- explains that Google already partially powers Apple's iCloud otherwise photos on OS X wouldn’t need to connect to content-storage download that directs to Google.  

"Unrelated to Apple’s cloud storage choices I started monitoring network access of all applications running on my Mac and noticed that most iCloud apps are connecting to Amazon AWS and Akamai resources," Kummer told Search Marketing Daily. "Lately, I started noticing that especially the Photos app now also connects to Google’s cloud infrastructure."

Kummer said that doesn’t necessarily imply that Apple will move away from any given provider in favor of another, but it does mean Apple is working with Google to store its content.

"Only time will tell if Apple will move in fact away from a certain provider," Kummer said.

Apple's deal made last year with Google will cost the company between $400 million to $600 million, though it's not clear if the amount represents total or annualize spending, reports CRN, citing sources.

Streaming music giant Spotify in February began shifting its streaming service to Google Cloud. In November, Google hired VMware co-founder Diane Green to run its cloud services division.

The fact that Apple announced building three data centers doesn't necessary mean the company will break its reliance on other cloud services completely.