Google Cloud adds borderless Lakehouse, AlloyDB Iceberg access to Agentic Data Cloud

[Google Cloud] Google Cloud on Nov. 4 announced updates to its Agentic Data Cloud. According to Google Cloud, its borderless Lakehouse, built on the open Apache Iceberg format, gives enterprises one governed foundation for data across multi-cloud, on-premises and SaaS platforms, and Apache Iceberg data under management has more than tripled over the past year. New capabilities include Gemini working directly on the borderless Lakehouse so business users can query records across clouds in natural language; general availability of cross-cloud interconnect and caching for AWS and Azure, which Google Cloud said provides a private, secure connection with zero variable egress fees; and direct Iceberg access in AlloyDB, which lets users join live operational data with historical lakehouse data in a single PostgreSQL query without ETL pipelines or copies. Google Cloud said AlloyDB direct Iceberg access is up to 7x faster on aggregation queries. Harish Ramesh, staff data engineer at Delivery Hero talabat, said the company reduced data-movement costs by approximately 40% using the borderless Lakehouse.