Google Cloud Introduces Cross-Engine Iceberg Support in BigQuery
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New BigQuery Iceberg support, highly actionable for GCP data engineers.
Google Cloud's preview of a serverless Iceberg REST catalog in BigQuery lets engines like Spark, Flink, and Trino share tables without duplication, while managed metadata and table maintenance reduce operational overhead. At Next '26, Google extended this to a cross-cloud lakehouse querying Iceberg across AWS, Azure, Databricks, and Snowflake, and introduced BigQuery ObjectRefs (GA) for combining structured Iceberg data with unstructured files for AI workflows. The Knowledge Catalog governance layer (preview) manages metadata and lineage, addressing the 'hidden tax' of Iceberg adoption.