Google Cloud SQL recently introduced the capability for an instance to have an IP address within the private address space of your VPC network. Previously, all Cloud SQL instances had IP addresses within the address space of the public Internet. Obviously, the public IP was a security and privacy concern, as well as a potential violation of some compliance and governance frameworks. Now, each instance may have a public IP, private IP, or both. There’s another potential benefit to using a private IP address: performance!