Sovereign-ish: Google Cloud keeps AI data in UK, but not the support

Google Cloud is attempting to ease concerns about where AI data is stored by offering organizations the option to keep Gemini 2.5 Flash machine learning processing entirely within the UK.

The option is an acknowledgment of local data (if perhaps not operational) sovereignty and compliance needs. Having data heading offshore for AI is a big no-no for many sectors, such as financial services. However, UK support calls will be routed to Google's global support personnel, while EU customers can receive support from personnel located in the bloc.

Just how sovereign is "sovereign," really? Yes, a customer can select Google Cloud's UK region (europe-west2) when using Gemini 2.5 Flash to store data in that region. Yes, machine learning computations (the "processing") for Gemini 2.5 Flash can be limited to within the UK region.

However, for data to unequivocally never leave the UK's jurisdictional boundary, support ...