Google is not only one of the biggest contributors to the open source community but also has a strong track record of delivering open source tools and platforms that give birth to robust technology ecosystems. Just witness the momentum that Android and Kubernetes now have. Recently, Google launched a new home for its open source projects, processes, and initiatives. The site runs deep and has several avenues worth investigating. Here is a tour and some highlights worth noting.
Will Norris, a software engineer at Google’s Open Source Programs Office, writes: “One of the tenets of our philosophy towards releasing open source code is that ‘more is better.’ We don’t know which projects will find an audience, so we help teams release code whenever possible. As a result, we have released thousands of projects under open source licenses ranging from larger products like TensorFlow, Go, and Kubernetes to smaller projects such as Light My Piano, Neuroglancer, and Periph.io. Some are fully supported while others are experimental or just for fun. With so many projects spread across 100 GitHub organizations and our self-hosted Git service, it can be difficult to see the scope and scale of our open source footprint.”
Projects. The new directory of open source projects, which is rapidly expanding, is one of the richest parts of the Google Open Source site. If you investigate many of the projects, you can find out how they are used at Google. A pull-down menu conveniently categorizes the many projects, so that you can investigate, for example, cloud, mobile or artificial intelligence tools. Animated graphics also shuffle between projects that you may not be aware of but might be interested in. Here is an example of one of these graphics: