17 Comments

Late to the party on this post but several bridges you've mentioned that Google needs to build between their data products are already kinda there. Google Sheets can natively connect to BigQuery, Data Studio connects natively to Google Analytics/Ads. Meanwhile, GA4 and Google Ads both have native exports to BigQuery, just that documentation on how to use/build them aren't that great.

That's why Google's pretty big for marketing/ad agencies, lots of their ad platforms/tools have those native connectors/exports. Now if they'd just offer better support for Data Studio, even for (currently non-existent, Data Studio is still surprisingly free) premium accounts, we'd be golden

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Yeah, that's the thing - it feels like they've done all of the hard part of getting these tools to talk to each other, and then skipped out on making the experience of using the tools together good. If they did that, they've got the technology to make something really incredible.

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> success of Microsoft’s bundled products. Many consumers, I said, would prefer to buy neatly packaged tools from a single seller, even if those products aren’t as good as specialized versions you could buy from individual vendors. Modularity, in other words, often isn’t as valuable as convenience

Convenience is truly the first principle of the internet economy or maybe even any kind of economy.

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But what are they goonnnaaa saaaaayyyy

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How exactly Google is designing a cohesive deck of integrated cards )

and sell the entire deck, ready to play, right out of the box...

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As always, lots of thought provoking points here. I think Google is winning at my company because of what you said about the buying process. If it’s in Google (or even supports marketplace billing) then it has to be vetted first before we can justify or explore other options.

I’m also strangely weirded out (perhaps even turned off) by Google’s willingness to give BigQuery away. It’s like the de facto agenda item on every meeting with our reps to mention BigQuery, pause to gauge reaction and then proceed with plan b because we didn’t bite this time.

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The need to evaluate whatever's in the market place is an interesting dynamic. Is that because it's pre-approved by security, etc? Because it's cheaper? Or something else?

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I think it stems from not requiring an additional contract negotiation, separate billing, etc. To clarify, it’s 1) Google’s offering 2) Marketplace offerings 3) Third party apps. So if we were just starting our data warehouse we’d have to vet BigQuery first and rule it out before moving on to Snowflake.

I think it’s just a way of simplifying or reducing the number of tools under consideration and requests for tools. Hoping it is a short term way of working rather than our process going forward.

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Yeah, for better or for worse, I think the trend will only accelerate. As megavendors offer more of the stack, I suspect IT teams will say put a lot of pressure to choose only a few vendors, and to consolidate who they buy from.

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I guess I better find an AWS shop ASAP.

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Thanks. Always a pleasure to read your blog. A lot seems miss in this argument. Loosely like 1) for many enterprises (2-10 Bn$ scale) cloud costs is still important. If developers are on AwS and Data on Google, egress/ingress costs is high specially if we think data ecosystem moving towards operationalizing stuff 2) google has a lot of Pokemon cards, for eg procella which they use for YouTube analytics.might outperform Bigquery on future if suited towards analytics. 3) can google really be a product-support company? For eg. Even for large customers Google's support is at best 'slow' vs AWS where experience is totally different (one of my friend works in a big gaming company where google budget is 12-16 Mn plus, and the support is pretty bad)

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On the cloud cost objection, that'd makes sense if people were choosing between GCP and AWS for their data tools, but the choice seems to be between Google and other third party tools. So, while egrress/ingress is expensive to go from AWS to GCP, most people are already doing that by going from AWS to a dozen random data startups.

On Google being a product support company - that's the change they'd have to make. It seems like the sort of thing that cuts against their cultural grain, so it may not be realistic. But I'd argue there's a really big opportunity for them, if they can change it.

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Alas, Google seems to be allergic to buyers. They prefer bidders.

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Our buying experience with Google was...weird.

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