New York, February 17, 2026, 15:35 EST — Regular session
- Snowflake shares slipped roughly 4% after Google rolled out a new BigQuery feature targeting cross-region analytics.
- Google’s “global queries” feature lets customers pull data from multiple regions in just one query.
- Investors are zeroed in on Snowflake’s Feb. 25 results, tracking demand trends and looking for any signals of competitive pressure.
Shares of Snowflake Inc (SNOW.N) slipped 3.9% to $175.14 in Tuesday afternoon trade, deepening losses for the high-growth software name as investors reacted to a new competitive push from Google’s cloud division.
The decline is notable: Snowflake’s data platform lets firms crunch big datasets without tying everything to just one cloud provider. But hyperscalers are adding more features directly to their own services, pushing back on Snowflake’s ability to command premium prices.
This year’s been rough for big tech and software names: valuations are sliding as doubts grow over whether all that AI investment pays off any time soon. Investors haven’t hesitated to hit the sell button at the first sign of cooling growth.
Google’s BigQuery release notes show customers now have access to “global queries,” letting them pull data from multiple regions in just one query. The feature, labeled as Preview for now, removes the need for building ETL pipelines — instead, a single SQL statement does the job. More details are up in the Google Cloud BigQuery release notes.
EssilorLuxottica’s customer data platform manager Rubens Ballabio touted the new feature in a blog post, saying it allows the company to pull together distributed data “without compromising compliance.” Google clarified that the tool is switched off by default; administrators will need to turn it on. Google Cloud Blog
Most of the market barely budged. The S&P 500 tracker SPY saw a modest 0.2% gain, and the Nasdaq 100 tracker QQQ hovered unchanged. Snowflake’s drop, then, drew attention on an otherwise subdued day.
Analyst calls were just one more thing rattling investors. Mizuho’s Gregg Moskowitz slashed his price target on Snowflake to $220 from $285 but stuck with his Outperform, blaming a steep drop in sector multiples. “Sentiment across software is nothing short of horrible at the moment,” he wrote. TipRanks/TheFly GuruFocus
Competition is fierce for Snowflake. Google’s BigQuery stands out among cloud-native data warehouse offerings crowding the same enterprise space, with Amazon’s Redshift and Databricks also jostling for share in overlapping segments.
Since December, Snowflake shares have swung sharply after the company flagged a slowdown in fiscal fourth-quarter product revenue growth and cited bigger discounts on long-term contracts.
Bears do face a snag: BigQuery’s “global queries” remain in preview, and shifting data between regions brings extra costs and compliance challenges. Those frictions could slow any immediate impact on buying decisions—even if the feature sharpens the competitive story.
The clock’s ticking for Snowflake, with its fourth-quarter and full-year fiscal 2026 earnings landing after the bell on Feb. 25. Investors want to see what’s happening with customer consumption and pricing, and whether executives mention any heat from the big cloud players.
