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Google Cloud is expanding the capabilities of its database and data analytics offerings with a series of updates announced today at the Google Cloud Next event in Tokyo. 

The announcements span across multiple services including the Spanner and Bigtable databases as well as the BigQuery data analytics and Looker business intelligence platforms. The overall goal is to integrate more flexibility into how data can be used and accessed, in an effort to help further accelerate generative AI deployments and adoption.

Key announcements and update from Google include:

• Spanner gets new graph and vector data support
• Bigtable adding SQL support
• Gemini AI is being integrated into BigQuery and Looker

“Organizations recognize that in order to get to incredible AI, they need to have incredible data,” Gerrit Kazmaier, GM & VP of Data Analytics at Google Cloud said during a briefing with press and analysts.

Google’s data analytics platforms get a new ‘look’ with gen AI

For data analytics, the big news is that Google’s Gemini AI capabilities are now available in BigQuery and Looker.  

The integration of Gemini provides a long list of over 20 new features including code generation, explanation...