What is Google Cloud Storage (GCS)?

Google Cloud Storage (GCS) is GCP's unified object storage service for storing any amount of data with global availability. Data is organized in buckets (globally unique names) containing objects (files). Storage classes: Standard: frequently accessed data. Nearline: accessed once per month; lower storage cost. Coldline: accessed once per quarter. Archive: accessed once per year; lowest cost. Transition between classes automatically with Object Lifecycle Management. Key features: Strong consistency (unlike early AWS S3). Uniform bucket-level access for IAM-based access control. Object versioning. Signed URLs for temporary public access. GCS is the central data lake for GCP data analytics workloads.