Public Datasets hosting programme (Google Cloud)
- Free allowance
- No published quota - Google 'pays for the hosting of these datasets'.
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- card?placeholder, not evidence; card required, phone unknown
- Binding limit
- write-gatedapplication form
- Evidence
- reported2 sources; a third party said so
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-05checked 2026-10-21 (inherited); stale on 2026-11-05
| Free tier | No published quota - Google 'pays for the hosting of these datasets'. Existing hosted sets (Sentinel-2, Landsat, ARCO-ERA5, NEXRAD) run to petabytes. unit unlimited; metered on unstated |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
There is no application form. The only stated route is 'If you have any questions about listing your public dataset on Cloud Storage, please contact us at [address removed]'. Effectively invitation-only, and the catalogue has grown slowly relative to AWS's 300+ PB. |
| Binding | write-gated the write is a queue with a person or a rule in it, so the upload rate is set by somebody else |
| Identity | card (placeholder) inferred from the category 'iaas'; the source record states no identity cost, so this is a class assumption, not evidence |
| Egress | Free public access to hosted datasets; anonymous API links work without auth. |
| Per-object cap | not stated |
| Retention | not stated |
| Interface | s3, rclone s3 |
| Tooling | GCS API / gcloud storage / rclone 'gcs'. |
| Composes with | Not applicable - this is Google's own catalogue, not an open intake. |
| Reliability | No published process means no predictable outcome; do not plan around it. |
Evidence 2
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-21 | docs.cloud.google.com/storage/docs/public-datasets | 'Google pays for the hosting of these datasets'; the entire intake instruction is an email address |
| 2026-10-21 | cloud.google.com/datasets | catalogue is Google-owned, commercial and government datasets only |
Unknown values 4
$.per_object_cap.notesthe field may be stated in a source that was not read$.per_object_cap.statedthe field may be stated in a source that was not read$.retention.notesthe field may be stated in a source that was not read$.retention.statedthe field may be stated in a source that was not read