Google Cloud BigQuery is a fully-managed, serverless data warehouse and analytics platform provided by Google Cloud. It allows you to store, analyze, and query large datasets using a distributed architecture. BigQuery is designed to handle petabyte-scale data and provides high scalability and performance.

Key features of Google Cloud BigQuery include:

1. Serverless architecture: BigQuery is fully managed by Google Cloud, which means you don’t have to worry about infrastructure management. It automatically scales to handle your data processing needs without requiring any manual configuration.

2. Data storage: BigQuery provides a highly scalable and durable storage system to store your data. It supports a variety of data formats, including CSV, JSON, Avro, and more. The data is replicated across multiple locations to ensure durability and availability.

3. SQL queries: You can use standard SQL queries to analyze and transform your data in BigQuery. It supports a wide range of SQL functions and operators for data manipulation and aggregation. BigQuery uses a distributed query engine to execute queries in parallel, enabling fast query performance.

4. Integration with other Google Cloud services: BigQuery integrates seamlessly with other Google Cloud services, such as Google Cloud Storage for data import/export, Google Data Studio for data visualization, and Google Cloud Machine Learning for advanced analytics and machine learning.

5. Advanced analytics: BigQuery provides advanced analytics capabilities, including support for window functions, user-defined functions (UDFs), and nested data structures. It also supports machine learning with features like BigQuery ML, which allows you to build and deploy machine learning models using SQL queries.

6. Security and access controls: BigQuery offers robust security features, including encryption at rest and in transit, identity and access management (IAM) integration, and fine-grained access controls at the dataset and table level.

7. Cost-effective pricing model: BigQuery offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model based on data storage and query usage. You only pay for the storage and computational resources you consume, making it cost-effective for both small and large-scale workloads.

Overall, Google Cloud BigQuery is a powerful and flexible platform for storing and analyzing large datasets. It simplifies the process of data analytics and enables businesses to derive valuable insights from their data efficiently.