Google's BigQuery can now analyze data from Sheets

Google is in the process of tearing down the wall between the Google Cloud Platform and Google Apps -- two of the company's primary, and typically siloed, business products.

Google announced Friday that its BigQuery cloud service now integrates with Google Drive, and the first application to feel the change is the spreadsheet software Google Sheets.

BigQuery is Google's cloud-based data analysis service which allows businesses to run SQL-like queries on data without having to invest in their own infrastructure. With the integration, businesses can now apply BigQuery's data-crunching skills to their spreadsheet data.

Specifically, businesses will be able to save query results directly to Google Sheets from the BigQuery UI; query files directly from Google Drive, without first loading them into BigQuery; and query Google Sheets spreadsheets from BigQuery as they are edited in Sheets.

"Time after time, we can make changes within our Google Sheets spreadsheet, and BigQuery will automatically pick up the changes next time you run a query against the spreadsheet!" Google BigQuery technical program manager Tino Tereshko wrote in a blog post.

For Google, linking its cloud platform with Google Apps could help bolster the overall business appeal for each service. With BigQuery in particular, Google is setting up the platform as more viable option in the market for cloud-based data warehouses.