Cloud Container Registry

Private Docker image registry for storing and serving container images on Google Cloud. Images were stored in Cloud Storage buckets and exposed via the gcr.io domain, with authentication through gcloud or service accounts.

Container Registry was widely used by teams running Kubernetes on GKE, Cloud Run workloads, or CI/CD pipelines on Google Cloud. It supported vulnerability scanning for images with supported operating systems and integrated with Cloud Build for automated image builds. As of March 2025, Google Cloud deprecated Container Registry and writing new images is no longer available. Artifact Registry is the recommended replacement and supports the same push-pull workflows along with multi-format artifacts, virtual and remote repositories, and enhanced access control.

Key capabilities:

• Docker Registry API compatible storage backed by Cloud Storage
• Multi-region hosts: gcr.io, us.gcr.io, eu.gcr.io, asia.gcr.io
• Vulnerability scanning for supported base images
• Authentication via gcloud docker configure, service account JSON, or access tokens
• Pub/Sub notifications for image push events
• Integration with Cloud Build, GKE, and Cloud Run

Teams historically used Container Registry as the private image store for CI/CD, staging and production deployments to GKE, and serverless container workloads on Cloud Run. Existing gcr.io URLs for Google-owned images remain available on Artifact Registry; migrated projects typically adopt Artifact Registry and pkg.dev repositories for new images.