Dumb question: Since strings are supported, couldn't you just store some JSON as a string? Or are you talking about supporting queries that involve parsing the JSON on the "server"?

Yeah, parent probably meant queryable JSON types, a la Postgres[1].

1: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/datatype-json.htm...

Not dumb, I was being inexact. I was talking about Spanner understanding the semantics of JSON, similar to Postgre's JSONB or MYSQL's JSON.

I think the OP was saying "dumb question" as in "I have a dumb question" rather than "this is a dumb question". At least that's the context I inferred.