Google BigQuery vs. Google Cloud Storage

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google BigQuery
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Google's BigQuery is part of the Google Cloud Platform, a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) supporting the querying and rapid analysis of enterprise data.
$0.04
Google Cloud Storage
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Google Cloud Storage is unified object storage for developers and enterprises.N/A
Pricing
Google BigQueryGoogle Cloud Storage
Editions & Modules
Standard edition
$0.04 / slot hour
Enterprise edition
$0.06 / slot hour
Enterprise Plus edition
$0.10 / slot hour
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google BigQueryGoogle Cloud Storage
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google BigQueryGoogle Cloud Storage
Features
Google BigQueryGoogle Cloud Storage
Database-as-a-Service
Comparison of Database-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Google BigQuery
8.4
Ratings
3% below category average
Google Cloud Storage
-
Ratings
Automatic software patching8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Database scalability9.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated backups8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Database security provisions8.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring and metrics8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Automatic host deployment8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google BigQueryGoogle Cloud Storage
Small Businesses
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
Azure Blob Storage
Azure Blob Storage
Score 9.7 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
Azure Blob Storage
Azure Blob Storage
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google BigQueryGoogle Cloud Storage
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.1
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.7
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.3
(0 ratings)
7.8
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google BigQueryGoogle Cloud Storage
Likelihood to Recommend
Google BigQuery is great for being the central datastore and entry point of data if you're on GCP. It seamlessly integrates with other Google products, meaning you can ingest data from other Google products with ease and little technical knowledge, and all of it is near real-time. Being serverless, BigQuery will scale with you, which means you don't have to worry about contention or spikes in demand/storage. This can, however, mean your costs can run away quickly or mount up at short notice.
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[Google Cloud Storage is] great for storing and playing large video files, and even sharing them securely with others, whether or not they are part of your organization. No need to download video files before watching, and can also be used to store any other kinds of files.
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Pros
  • Its serverless architecture and underlying Dremel technology are incredibly fast even on complex datasets. I can get answers to my questions almost instantly, without waiting hours for traditional data warehouses to churn through the data.
  • Previously, our data was scattered across various databases and spreadsheets and getting a holistic view was pretty difficult. Google BigQuery acts as a central repository and consolidates everything in one place to join data sets and find hidden patterns.
  • Running reports on our old systems used to take forever. Google BigQuery's crazy fast query speed lets us get insights from massive datasets in seconds.
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  • Really great, easy to use interface helps us manage files easily. Storage is fast and inexpensive, so we don't have to spin up storage instances locally
  • Great set of command-line tools to manage data and storage options via scripts and apps, as well as an SDK means we can build GCS into our orchestration and operations tools
  • Robust integration with other Google cloud tools means that we don't have to think too hard about using GCS for a variety of storage tasks as we interact with other Google services.
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Cons
  • It is challenging to predict costs due to BigQuery's pay-per-query pricing model. User-friendly cost estimation tools, along with improved budget alerting features, could help users better manage and predict expenses.
  • The BigQuery interface is less intuitive. A more user-friendly interface, enhanced documentation, and built-in tutorial systems could make BigQuery more accessible to a broader audience.
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  • Sometimes we would find advice for how to do something that wasn't documented in the API, although this was very early on.
  • When we first started using it, Google Cloud Storage was changing a lot, and some of these changes required us to adapt our code to fit them.
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Likelihood to Renew
We have to use this product as its a 3rd party supplier choice to utilise this product for their data side backend so will not be likely we will move away from this product in the future unless the 3rd party supplier decides to change data vendors.
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after all of the investment made in the tool and considering how many teams use it I think we would not be likely to move away from this tool. A lot of our information including historical is already here and we are happy with the capabilities of the tool currently
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Usability
web UI is easy and convenient. Many RDBMS clients such as aqua data studio, Dbeaver data grid, and others connect. Range of well-documented APIs available. The range of features keeps expanding, increasing similar features to traditional RDBMS such as Oracle and DB2
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Overall I say this product is awesome and very easy to use, and would highly recommend it to other business professionals. I feel that my documents and work product are safe and secure, and that I will find them easily when needed.
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Reliability and Availability
I have never had any significant issues with Google Big Query. It always seems to be up and running properly when I need it. I cannot recall any times where I received any kind of application errors or unplanned outages. If there were any they were resolved quickly by my IT team so I didn't notice them.
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Performance
I think Google Big Query's performance is in the acceptable range. Sometimes larger datasets are somewhat sluggish to load but for most of our applications it performs at a reasonable speed. We do have some reports that include a lot of complex calculations and others that run on granular store level data that so sometimes take a bit longer to load which can be frustrating.
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For performance i give Google Cloud Storage 10 of 10 on performance because even though there are other softwares that do exactly the same thing as Google Drive, it still works exceptionally well. It is very fast, and and far as integration, the only software I have used with it that integrated was Google Docs, and of course it integrates perfectly.
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Support Rating
BigQuery can be difficult to support because it is so solid as a product. Many of the issues you will see are related to your own data sets, however you may see issues importing data and managing jobs. If this occurs, it can be a challenge to get to speak to the correct person who can help you.
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We have never used official support from Google for our Google Cloud Storage, but there is plenty of documentation in place already. With a small amount of work, anybody should be able to get started. Once needs get more complicated, there is still documentation from Google, but also plenty of community support for common use cases around the internet.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
overall I was not directly involved but hears the teams were satisfied with the implementation. the teams that used the tool did not encounter major issues, it was as expected with minor issues and bugs that were resolved later. The more significant learning curve was actually starting to use the tool
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Alternatives Considered
Google BigQuery of course collects a much much larger array of raw data and can handle (practically) an unlimited amount of data. For a large enterprise like ours that relies on large-scale analytics, this is absolutely imperative. Google BigQuery can also combine GA4 data with external sources (like CRM tools), so our analytics can be unified. Due to our heavy reliance on GA4, Google BigQuery is the natural choice since it is a Google product and has better integration.
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Google Cloud Storage compares very similar to Dropbox. The difference of using Googe Cloud Storage is that it is part of a big bundle of products that you are probably already using. If you are a big Google user then it would make sense to get Google Cloud Storage. This way you can have all of the tools you need under one roof. I selected Google Cloud Storage because I was already using Google's other products and I was very impressed by those products so it was an easy sale.
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Scalability
We have continued to expand out use of Google Big Query over the years. I'd say its flexibility and scalability is actually quite good. It also integrates well with other tools like Tableau and Power BI. It has served the needs of multiple data sources across multiple departments within my company.
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Return on Investment
  • In some places, Google BigQuery has helped us save some money by avoiding the need for expensive infrastructure and reducing some of the operational costs.
  • Scalability is up-to-date and really helpful in multiple places.
  • Knowledge transfer is easy as it is very user-friendly, so the learning curve has been reduced.
  • Also, it gives us more insights from our data, helping us make smarter decisions for our business.
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  • It allows the use of large Big Query data sets, this enables better data analysis.
  • It helps the business maintain a central storage solution for data.
  • Secure and easy to learn and use, it allows for fast adoption which improves productivity.
  • It does not enable collaboration and has limits on flexibility.
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ScreenShots

Google BigQuery Screenshots

Screenshot of Migrating data warehouses to BigQuery - Features a streamlined migration path from Netezza, Oracle, Redshift, Teradata, or Snowflake to BigQuery using the fully managed BigQuery Migration Service.Screenshot of bringing any data into BigQuery - Data files can be uploaded from local sources, Google Drive, or Cloud Storage buckets, using BigQuery Data Transfer Service (DTS), Cloud Data Fusion plugins, by replicating data from relational databases with Datastream for BigQuery, or by leveraging Google's data integration partnerships.Screenshot of generative AI use cases with BigQuery and Gemini models - Data pipelines that blend structured data, unstructured data and generative AI models together can be built to create a new class of analytical applications. BigQuery integrates with Gemini 1.0 Pro using Vertex AI. The Gemini 1.0 Pro model is designed for higher input/output scale and better result quality across a wide range of tasks like text summarization and sentiment analysis. It can be accessed using simple SQL statements or BigQuery’s embedded DataFrame API from right inside the BigQuery console.Screenshot of insights derived from images, documents, and audio files, combined with structured data - Unstructured data represents a large portion of untapped enterprise data. However, it can be challenging to interpret, making it difficult to extract meaningful insights from it. Leveraging the power of BigLake, users can derive insights from images, documents, and audio files using a broad range of AI models including Vertex AI’s vision, document processing, and speech-to-text APIs, open-source TensorFlow Hub models, or custom models.Screenshot of event-driven analysis - Built-in streaming capabilities automatically ingest streaming data and make it immediately available to query. This allows users to make business decisions based on the freshest data. Or Dataflow can be used to enable simplified streaming data pipelines.Screenshot of predicting business outcomes AI/ML - Predictive analytics can be used to streamline operations, boost revenue, and mitigate risk. BigQuery ML democratizes the use of ML by empowering data analysts to build and run models using existing business intelligence tools and spreadsheets.