The two key components of any data pipeline are data lakes and warehouses. This course highlights use-cases for each type of storage and dives into the available data lake and warehouse solutions on Google Cloud in technical detail. Also, this course describes the role of a data engineer, the benefits of a successful data pipeline to business operations, and examines why data engineering should be done in a cloud environment. This is the first course of the Data Engineering on Google Cloud series. After completing this course, enroll in the Building Batch Data Pipelines on Google Cloud course.