Cloud Storage — Object storage
Buckets of files (images, backups, logs, static assets) accessible via URL or API. Cheap, infinitely scalable, not a filesystem.
Cloud Storage is a globally-consistent object store scoped by bucket. Each object has a key (path-like string), content, metadata, and versioning history (if enabled). Strong consistency: read-your-writes, list-after-upload.
Location types: regional (one , cheapest, lowest latency), dual-region, multi-regional. Multi-regional provides 99.95% availability SLA and cross-region redundancy for critical data.
Access control: bucket + (optional) fine-grained object ACLs. Uniform bucket-level access is recommended — it disables ACLs and relies on IAM only, cleaner and easier to audit. Signed URLs grant temporary, scoped access without exposing credentials.
Integrations: Cloud CDN for caching, Cloud Functions / triggers on object events (via Eventarc), Dataflow/BigQuery as data source, direct URL serving for static website hosting.
Pricing: storage per GB/month (Standard ~$0.020, Archive ~$0.0012), per-operation charges (Class A writes $0.05/10k, Class B reads $0.004/10k), network egress by destination. In-region to GCP services is free.
Common anti-patterns: using it as a database (no atomic multi-object transactions; use Firestore/Cloud SQL), using it for millions of tiny files (operation costs stack up — batch into larger objects).
Grounded on https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/introduction
Next up
Cloud SQL — Managed relational databases
PostgreSQL, MySQL, or SQL Server run by Google: backups, high availability, upgrades, and patches handled for you.