Can Someone Explain How BigQuery Query / Analysis Pricing Works?
I have a BQ table with about 34M rows (it will grow to ~500M in a few months).  I get the storage pricing, but don't really understand how the query / analysis pricing works.

For example, if I run a query that is a simple select that returns 3 columns from about 20 records it says that 644MB was processed.  Even if i remove columns or criteria on the where clause, it still shows that I'm processing 6xx MB of data.

Interestingly, if I run a select count(*) from table, it reports 0 bytes processed.  

One of the use cases for BigQuery is to create dashboards and ad hoc reports, however, I don't see how this can be practical if it's going to cost $.03 for every 2 queries made against the table.  

Am I missing something?   Any strategies for reducing the amount of data processed for simple data access?
Can Someone Explain How BigQuery Query / Analysis Pricing Works?
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I have a BQ table with about 34M rows (it will grow to ~500M in a few months).  I get the storage pricing, but don't really understand how the query / analysis pricing works.

For example, if I run a query that is a simple select that returns 3 columns from about 20 records it says that 644MB was processed.  Even if i remove columns or criteria on the where clause, it still shows that I'm processing 6xx MB of data.

Interestingly, if I run a select count(*) from table, it reports 0 bytes processed.  

One of the use cases for BigQuery is to create dashboards and ad hoc reports, however, I don't see how this can be practical if it's going to cost $.03 for every 2 queries made against the table.  

Am I missing something?   Any strategies for reducing the amount of data processed for simple data access?