I guess I was living under a rock for the last month and a half or so, because I had no idea that Google released a free version of BigQuery. This version is completely free (no entering credit card info just in-case you go over a limit). This is great either for beginners wanting to practice their SQL / ETL skills or for any organization that wants to export their Google Analytics 4 data to BigQuery to see if they can wane more insights. I wrote in my previous blog post that the organizations that take advantage of BigQuery will be the organizations best equipped to deal with the impending end of Universal Analytics support. Also, I still believe that letting non-GA360 organizations export GA4 data to BigQuery is a bit of an olive branch. It seems like the reporting is not up to standard and this is a way to give greater access.
Sandbox is available to anyone with a Google account. Setup was pretty seemless as I was up and querying both Google’s GA4 BigQuery demo data as well as my own blog data in no time. Take a look at this link for instructions on how to get started.