Tech giant Google is renaming its Data Studio to “Looker Studio” and consolidating its business intelligence tools.Google has consolidated all of its business intelligence tools under the Looker brand, it announced at Cloud Next 2022, its virtual user conference.

Looker will now be the face of all existing Google Cloud data analytics programs. These programs will be included in the Looker Suite and carry the Looker name. For example, Data Studio is now Looker Studio.

“Looker is the name you’ll hear when we talk about all of our Google Cloud business intelligence products as we combine Looker, Data Studio and core Google technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning,” Keith Wright, senior director of business intelligence product management at Google.
Looker Suite includes integrated cloud infrastructure services
Looker launches today in Cloud Preview. The new version will include integrated core cloud infrastructure services, including key security and management services.

Google is also launching a preview of Looker’s integration with Google Sheets. Support for visualization tools such as Salesforce’s Tableau is also planned.

This continues Google’s integration trend since its $2.6 billion acquisition of Looker in 2020, shortly after which the search engine giant began offering full support for the Google Marketing Analytics Suite.

Processes connects channel names as a unique identifier
In early 2022, YouTube began allowing content creators to change both the name and URL of their channels. They provided branding opportunities to help channels identify and distinguish themselves.

However, unlike channel names, each handle will be unique, allowing creators to further differentiate their own brand. This is similar to the handles and usernames commonly used on other social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Prior to this update, YouTube offered limited support for using the format. Users could use it in YouTube Live chats to mention others, or creators could use the @format to mention channels and video titles, but could only tag another user by replying to their comments.

The @Format username seeks to compete with TikTok
With more than a billion users worldwide, the short-format video platform TikTok has become a major player in the social media world. Thus, other social media platforms have been looking for ways to compete with it Facebook, launching Reels and YouTube, expanding into shorts.

One of TikTok’s features is the ability for users to participate in conversations through posts and summary discussions and results. By adding @username tokens to both channel pages and shorts, YouTube hopes to generate similar usage.