Google Cloud Platform and Fastly Enable Vimeo to Scale High-Quality Video Delivery While Reducing Infrastructure Costs

Vimeo operates as a video platform serving over 60 million content creators and 240 million monthly viewers across 150+ countries. The company faced critical infrastructure constraints as its legacy approach relied on on-premises servers for video uploads, which limited scalability and consumed engineering resources on server and storage management. To address these challenges while maintaining video delivery quality, Vimeo built an adaptive video-delivery service on Google Cloud Platform and Fastly's edge cloud platform, enabling on-demand scaling without requiring in-house infrastructure management.

Vimeo replaced its legacy upload infrastructure by deploying Google Cloud Storage fronted with Fastly's edge cloud to optimize regional routing and ensure low-latency, high-throughput connections for publishers. Google Compute Engine powers the video transcoding and streaming service, automatically scaling to handle demand spikes as users stream simultaneously across diverse device types and network conditions. This architecture customizes video delivery based on real-time network traffic and device capabilities, ensuring smooth, high-quality playback across all platforms while eliminating the need for manual infrastructure provisioning.

The implementation delivered immediate business value for Vimeo. Engineers redirected from infrastructure management duties now focus on continuous platform improvements and feature development. The system's reliability reduced video abandonment caused by delays or playback glitches, while eliminating in-house infrastructure costs enabled Vimeo to reinvest in product innovation. By leveraging Google Cloud's low-latency storage and Fastly's global edge network, Vimeo increased the volume and quality of videos delivered to viewers, strengthening its competitive position while supporting its growing base of creators and viewers worldwide.