The cloud -- or online data solutions provided by various companies -- is primed to take over the internet soon. Just as Cisco Systems announced plans to invest $1 billion in its cloud, Google on Tuesday took aim at Amazon, the current leader of cloud hosting, by dropping its prices.

Google senior vice president of technical infrastructure (TI in Google speak) Urs Hölzle told attendees at the Google Cloud Platform Live event (and those watching online) that Google would follow a dramatic price structure from now on. "We think cloud pricing should track Moore's Law, so we're simplifying and reducing prices for our various on-demand, pay-as-you-go services by 30 to 85 percent," said Hölzle.

In basic terms, Moore's Law is the observation that every 18 months to two years, the power of computing for price doubles. The "law," named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, is officially (and originally) much more technical, describing the exponential increase in the number of transistors on integrated circuits.

But on a basic level, you can see it in the fact that the first computers filled rooms and were incredibly expensive, but now you can carry a device that's much more powerful and costs a couple-hundred bucks.

When it comes to cloud computing, Hölzle said, "Pricing hasn't followed Moore's Law. Over the past five years, hardware costs improved by 20 to 30 percent annually, but public cloud prices fell at just 8 percent per year."

"We don't think this gap should really exist," Hölzle said. "We believe the price of virtualized hardware should follow the same price as real hardware."

A wide range of enterprise cloud services by Google are going to see price drops, including data analytics BigQuery dropping as much as 85 percent, Cloud Storage dropping 68 percent, and Compute Engine lowering 32 percent across the board, according to ZDNet. Google also said it was simplifying pricing on its virtual machine App Engine, a tool for building and hosting web applications on Google's servers.

According to Information Week, some are skeptical that Google's newfound commitment to Moore's Law in cloud pricing explains the Mountain View company slashing prices for developers and business customers, since the cost of running services like the App Engine aren't solely tied to the price of semiconductors, but also includes Google staffing, utilities, and physical housing costs.

Google is likely taking a shot across the bow of Amazon and Microsoft, who both run popular cloud hosting services (Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure), and who are both likely to respond to Google's competitive offer with whatever price reductions they can afford.

Meanwhile, Cisco Systems, according to Reuters, plans to enter the same market and offer similar cloud computing services, and announced it would be investing $1 billion over the next two years to compete with Google, Microsoft, and the leading cloud services company, Amazon.

The bottom line in Google's announcement for the general consumer is that lower prices for cloud computing will lead to more, and better -- and far more connected -- apps for Android, Chrome, your computer, and on the web.