<h1>Google Cloud Expands Full Support for OpenTelemetry in Cloud Monitoring</h1>
Google Cloud has announced its comprehensive support for the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) in Cloud Monitoring. This significant enhancement allows users to utilize a vendor-agnostic pipeline for sending metrics, traces, and logs, ensuring standards-based instrumentation and preventing vendor lock-in.
With the inclusion of full OTLP support, developers can now collect and send metrics using the OpenTelemetry standard directly to Google’s monitoring infrastructure. This development complements the existing support for trace and log ingestion in Cloud Monitoring.
A key feature of this update includes the ability to send OTLP-formatted metrics via an OpenTelemetry Collector or directly to Cloud Monitoring. These metrics, once ingested, are stored and queryable much like Prometheus data, which enhances compatibility and flexibility for various use cases. Additional new capabilities include support for delta-type metrics, exponential histograms, and expanded naming conventions.
In line with these enhancements, Google has introduced Managed OpenTelemetry for GKE. This fully managed collector pipeline is designed specifically for Kubernetes workloads, providing a seamless integration for GKE users. To streamline and unify data ingestion, a new endpoint (<a href="http://telemetry.googleapis.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">telemetry.googleapis.com</a>) is being rolled out.
Currently, these features are available in preview for OpenTelemetry versions 0.140.0 or later. In the broader landscape, Google’s approach to implementing OpenTelemetry is compared to solutions provided by AWS CloudWatch, Datadog, New Relic, SigNoz, and Grafana Cloud, highlighting the competitive advantage and flexibility of Google Cloud’s offering.
Overall, this development marks a pivotal step in advancing cloud-native observability solutions, providing users with robust and flexible monitoring capabilities while embracing industry standards.

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Google Cloud now offers full support for the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) in Cloud Monitoring, enabling vendor-agnostic ingestion of metrics, traces, and logs. Key additions include OTLP-formatted metrics support (stored similarly to Prometheus data), delta-type metrics, exponential histograms, and expanded naming conventions. A new Managed OpenTelemetry for GKE provides a fully managed collector pipeline for Kubernetes workloads, and a new unified endpoint (telemetry.googleapis.com) is being introduced. Features are currently in preview for OpenTelemetry versions 0.140.0 or later.

Google Cloud Enhances Cloud Monitoring with Comprehensive OpenTelemetry Support