BigQuery: provide a public API to opt out of built-in OpenTelemetry tracing

[ritwickdsouza]

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Summary of the feature request

When opentelemetry-api is installed and a global tracer provider is configured, google-cloud-bigquery automatically wraps every BQ call in a span (BigQuery.job.begin, BigQuery.getQueryResults, etc.) via opentelemetry_tracing.create_span. There is no documented way to opt out, so projects that want OTel for their own code but not for BQ end up with their traces drowned in BQ spans.

Desired code experience

Any of the following would be a supported, public way to disable the library's built-in tracing:

# Option A — env var
# GOOGLE_CLOUD_BIGQUERY_DISABLE_TRACING=1

# Option B — constructor argument
from google.cloud import bigquery
client = bigquery.Client(enable_tracing=False)

# Option C — honor the OTel SDK's standard opt-out
# OTEL_PYTHON_DISABLED_INSTRUMENTATIONS=google-cloud-bigquery

Happy to send a PR if there is a preferred approach.

Expected results

With any of the above set, BQ client calls should not emit spans, even though opentelemetry-api is installed and a tracer provider is configured for the rest of the application.

API client name and version

google-cloud-bigquery v3.38.0

Use case

We use Logfire (OpenTelemetry-based) to trace AI-agent runs and outbound HTTP. Once the tracer provider is configured, every BQ call also emits a span, which drowns out the agent traces we actually care about. We want OTel for our own code, but not for BQ.

Additional context

The only working workaround today is mutating the module-level HAS_OPENTELEMETRY flag before any BQ call:

import google.cloud.bigquery.opentelemetry_tracing as _bq_otel
_bq_otel.HAS_OPENTELEMETRY = False

This works because create_span reads the global at call time and client.py only imports create_span, not the flag itself. But it relies on a non-public attribute and could silently regress on any internal refactor. Uninstalling opentelemetry-api is not viable when the rest of the application depends on it.

Source reference: packages/google-cloud-bigquery/google/cloud/bigquery/opentelemetry_tracing.py — the HAS_OPENTELEMETRY flag and create_span function.