Today I am not going to provide any insights or findings. The article is based on my experience and what I think might happen in the future.
Recently, Google Data Studio was renamed Looker Studio. Now you may be wondering, why may Google acquired Looker. Actually, Google paid $2.6 billion in 2020 for the acquisition. By that time, Google has its own data visualization platform, which is Google Data Studio. Google Data Studio was free but, by that time there were so many limitations with the platform.
Ok, let me tell one of my experiences. In 2021 September (I guess), I wanted to sort my insights by Day of Week (which is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) but, there was no such function to do that (At the moment I write this article, they have developed a short key for this function). I had to write a code for that. For those who are interested, I'll share my code.
AVG(CASE WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(WEEKDAY(Date), "0" ) THEN 6 WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(WEEKDAY(Date), "1" ) THEN 0 WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(WEEKDAY(Date), "2" ) THEN 1 WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(WEEKDAY(Date), "3" ) THEN 2 WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(WEEKDAY(Date), "4" ) THEN 3 WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(WEEKDAY(Date), "5" ) THEN 4 WHEN REGEXP_MATCH(WEEKDAY(Date), "6" ) THEN 5 END )
Now, back to my point. Google is a data company, which collects, stores, and sells data. Selling insights to businesses has become a key part of this. For that, they have built the Data Studio platform. But, in comparison to Tableau and PowerBI, Google Analytics was far behind. To compete with these giants, Google had two options, either improve its existing platform or acquire a platform.
- Google owns Google Maps.
- Google owns Android. As of September 2022, android has a 71.55% market share. (Source: statcounter.com)
- Google owns the Google Search Engine. Again as of September 2022, they have over 92% market share. (Source: statcounter.com)
- Google owns YouTube.
- Google owns Google chrome and as of September 2022, they have over 64% of the market share. (Source: statcounter.com)
- Google owns the biggest web analytics platform. With the launch of GA4, users now get the ability to analyze data and enhance their online business opportunities. (Source: Statistica.com)
All these are the strategies for Looker, and I believe that Looker will start challenging Tableau and PowerBI products. As a result of competition, users could expect innovative products.
The following Video by the Google Cloud team already hints about the future.
These products may be challenged by web 3.0 and blockchain-based technologies. But, it will also lead to a better version of insight creation and storytelling tools.