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Exactly, even after seeing the issue I can't make heads or tails of what the hell a "TBs scanned" is relative to row counts, etc. Likewise, it seems to place a lot of assumptions on knowing what tables include - and on a dataset you didn't build yourself how can you know the tables are optimized to lower your costs? Hell, how can you even know what the costs are?

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"TBs scanned" is the number of tebibytes of stored data that the system had to scan to serve your query. This is how BQ is billed, in the on-demand model.

The console shows you this number (in very small letters) after you have entered the query but before you press go. In the on-demand billing model, which is what you were using, you can multiply this number by $6.25 to understand your query cost, exactly.

It's a design that's hostile to new customers, I agree. But it is comprehensible.

There should be a cost estimate displayed prominently by default, and an option to turn it off for power users who know what they're doing (but keep the current less-prominently displayed amount of data estimate).

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