Google Enhances BigLake and BigQuery with Iceberg Support, Eyes Competitive Edge in Cloud Data Wars

Google Cloud has introduced new upgrades to its BigLake and BigQuery services, focusing on Apache Iceberg, an open-source table format.

Iceberg structures data into tables, tracks changes over time, and supports fast SQL queries—making it ideal for modern data management.

BigLake now supports smarter storage, automatically shifting infrequently accessed data to lower-cost tiers. It also simplifies data loading from systems like Hadoop and Delta Lake, with support for customer-managed encryption keys.

BigQuery is receiving its own boost through the new “advanced runtime” in preview, which uses vectorization and data pruning to speed up analytics without requiring code changes. Updates and short queries will also perform faster.

Additionally, BigQuery Notebooks now include AI-powered coding assistance via Google’s Gemini models. A new Dataplex Universal Catalog tool enables centralized metadata management across various data sources.

Finally, Google is launching Lightning Engine for Apache Spark, promising 3x faster processing through advanced performance techniques.

According to media reports, Microsoft Corp. is rapidly expanding its presence in the data analytics market with Fabric, its unified data platform, now adopted by over 21,000 organisations globally just 18 months after its launch.

Fabric was first announced in May 2023 as a comprehensive data platform that integrates multiple tools—including data engineering, data warehousing, real-time analytics, and business intelligence—into a single offering.