Yes, it’s official, Google has just killed Data Studio. Let me explain…

Last week, at the Google Cloud Next conference, Google announced that Data Studio is no more.

But, before all you Google haters out there start smugly screaming “I told you so!” And before all of you faithful Data Studio users out there start hitting the panic button, let me just temper the jubilation/terror by saying “please do calm down”, it’s simply the name that’s being killed off.

The big news is that Google is bringing together a complete, unified BI platform with Looker and Data Studio. Henceforth, Data Studio will now be known as Looker Studio. But what else has changed? And what does this mean for you as an existing Data Studio user?

Well, as far as I can gather, and there isn’t a huge amount of information out there, not a lot. The only differences for existing users are the name change and the fact that there’s now a Looker data connector available that gives you access to all of the data models that have been created in your Looker account.

But some of you might be wondering “what is Looker?” and what does it have to do with Google. Well, Looker was founded in 2012 and acquired by Google in early 2020 for an eye-watering 2.6 billion dollars. So it’s not all that surprising (at least to me) to finally see a closer integration with the Google Cloud Platform and Data Studio. For a little more about what Looker is, according to its Wikipedia page:

“Looker makes use of a simple modelling language called LookML that lets data teams define the relationships in their database so business users can explore, save, and download data with only a basic understanding of SQL. The product was the first commercially available business intelligence platform built for and aimed at scalable or massively parallel RDBMS like Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, HP Vertica, Netezza, and Teradata.”

So, the way Google describes the changes and benefits for both Data Studio and Looker customers is as follows. From a Looker user’s perspective they’ll now be able to more easily self-serve which basically means helping business users access data on their own through over 600 data connectors.

They’ll be able to blend their Looker data with all of the different data sources that Data Studio provides and harness the power of Data Studio’s drag-and-drop report builder. So, kind of like providing a simple front end to the Looker backend.

And what about Data Studio users? What are the main benefits for them? Well, unless you’re already a Looker user, this won’t make a blind bit of difference except for 2 relatively small updates.

First, Looker Studio will now add support for field hierarchies, Dimensions Groups and help keep things organised. But these are things, as far as I can gather, that are specific to data models created in Looker.

And second, there will be greater visibility for field descriptions to enable users to quickly check the description information (but again, specific to the Looker model).

So, again, unless you’re an existing Looker user, the changes that have been announced so far are not going to impact your day-to-today usage of Data Studio (sorry, I mean Looker Studio) at all.

As well as Looker Studio, there was also the announcement of Looker Studio Pro which is essentially Data Studio but with new enterprise management features, team collaboration capabilities, and SLAs built in.

So customers can use Looker Studio as part of their data stack while also addressing their governance and compliance requirements.

Conclusion

So, what do I think about all of this? Well, considering that it’s basically just a name change for Data Studio unless you’re a Looker user (which I’m not), there’s not much to get excited or panicked about. In fact, I’m pretty excited to see what new developments will be made to Looker Studio moving forward.

What I’m hoping will happen is that, as developers work on creating new, more-advanced functionalities for their paid pro offering, some of the, what you might call “by-products” or features of that development will actually find their way into the free to use version.

I’ll, of course, keep you updated as and when any more information becomes available. Also, I would love to hear what you think about these latest developments. Let me know in the comments below.