Looker Studio is the latest new Google product name to get used to! Yesterday, at Google Cloud Next ‘22, it was announced that Google Data Studio will now be known as Looker Studio. In this blog we give our thoughts on what this means and what it might mean for the future.
The rebrand follows on from Google acquiring data analytics start-up Looker for $2.6B a few years ago. Earlier this year Data Studio & Looker were also “integrated together” in an announcement. Until now, users of Google Data Studio wouldn’t have noticed any difference to their experience.
What’s changed?
That’s not to say much has changed now either. After the announcement, all documentation was updated to refer to “Looker Studio”. The logo in the top-left corner was also changed. As far as we can tell there has been no functionality change yet. Changes to appearance and functionality are sure to come in the near future. Google are positioning Looker as “your unified business intelligence platform”.
Is it still going to be free?
Google Data Studio offered a superb product for zero cost compared to its competitors. It is reassuring to know that the free tier will be staying. This was made clear in the announcement.
What developments can we expect?
We are also pleased to hear about an enterprise version, “Looker Studio Pro”. Full details of the features offered and the price of this service have not been revealed yet.
One feature teased is customer support. Looker Studio has been a sometimes unreliable product in the past. The possibility of having a dedicated resource to help with issues is a major benefit.
Team Workspaces will be a welcome feature to a product with a rudimentary file organising system. It sounds like any project assigned to a team will be accessible and edited by all members. This removes the need to add users individually.
It will be possible to link Looker Studio to a Google Cloud project. By connecting to a project directly, the use of a specific user’s credentials is avoided. In the case that the dashboard creator leaves a company, the dashboard will continue to function when the creator’s access is revoked.
Overall thoughts
A lot from the statement put out by Google seems promising. There is however a lack of information around pricing and features. We are therefore a little unsure of the true impact of this announcement.
It is encouraging to see Looker Studio become more ingrained in Google’s infrastructure. Surely this can only mean good things for future dashboarding and data visualisation. Our Media Solutions team will be eagerly watching future developments.
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