Google is likely to launch a cloud services platform at its annual developer conference, Google I/O, next week in San Francisco, according to a report on GigaOm.

The website says it has confirmed with multiple sources (but, notably, none yet from Google) that the company will unveil a cloud-computing offering to compete directly with the Amazon EC2 cloud. The story also cites Microsoft  sources stating that the company is also building an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) platform that could be ready before Google's.

Interestingly, the GigaOm scoop about Google's cloud liftoff comes at the same time Google is proclaiming itself a hardware company. At the company's recent stockholder meeting, Google Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette called his company one of the world's largest hardware makers. A story on Wired Enterprise opines that Pichette likely was looking to convince investors that Google has the moxie to succeed with its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola.

"There's a bit of a mythology that Google doesn't know anything about hardware," Pichette is quoted as saying. "We're big in hardware. Google actually builds servers in a factory that actually probably makes us one of the largest hardware manufacturers in the world … So we were very well-equipped from the hardware side, to be very competitive in that space."

So is it an online services company, a cloud computing company or a hardware company? Chances are those familiar with Google's multifaceted strategy would say the answer is simply "yes."