VisaSpark
Sign in

Google Cloud

Google's cloud platform, known for data/ML services and Kubernetes origins.

CurrentintermediateGuide only -- no course yet
Explore related technologies

Overview

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers compute, storage, and managed services with particular strength in data analytics and machine learning infrastructure, and is where Kubernetes originated (as an evolution of Google's internal Borg system).

What it is
A cloud computing platform offering compute, storage, data analytics, and machine learning services.
Why it's used
For strong data/ML tooling (BigQuery, Vertex AI) and its close relationship to Kubernetes.
Where it fits
An alternative to AWS/Azure, often chosen for data-heavy or ML-heavy workloads.

Core concepts

  • Compute Engine
  • Cloud Storage
  • BigQuery (data warehouse)
  • IAM

Example

BigQuery runs standard-looking SQL but scales to querying terabytes without provisioning servers -- a hallmark of GCP's data-analytics-first services.

-- BigQuery: SQL over massive datasets, serverless
SELECT region, SUM(revenue)
FROM sales.transactions
GROUP BY region;

Common use cases

  • Data analytics at scale
  • Machine learning infrastructure
  • General cloud hosting

Project ideas

  • Sketch how you'd move a Pandas-based analysis to BigQuery once the dataset outgrows a single machine's memory

Official references