by ex-googlers, for ex-googlers - a lookup table of similar tech & services
15,704
635 commits
updated Jan 12, 2026
A handy lookup table of similar technology and services to help ex-googlers survive the real world :) pull-requests are very welcomed. Please do not list any confidential projects!
For a working example of (some) of these technologies integrated together, see: https://github.com/google/startup-os
See also: System Design Primer, The Hadoop Ecosystem Table, Map AWS services to GCP products, Database of Databases, Google Open Source Glossary
| Google Internal | Google External | Open Source / Real-World |
|---|---|---|
| MapReduce | Apache Hadoop, Spark | |
| Flume | DataFlow | Apache Beam |
| Protocol Buffer | Protobuf, FlatBuffers | Cap'n Proto, Thrift, Avro, Amazon Ion, CBOR, kryo |
| Stubby | gRPC | Thrift, Bolt |
| Chubby | Apache Zookeeper, etcd, HashiCorp Consul | |
| Goops / PubSub | Cloud Pub/Sub | Apache Kafka, Apache Pulsar, Facebook LogDevice |
//base | abseil |
| Google Internal | Google External | Open Source / Real-World |
|---|---|---|
| Borg | Kubernetes | Apache Mesos, Apache Aurora, HashiCorp Nomad |
| GSLB | Cloud Load Balancing - Internal | AWS ELB, Istio, linkerd |
| OnePlatform | API Gateway | Swagger |
| GFE, Maglev, uberproxy | Cloud Load Balancing - HTTPS / External | envoy, AWS ALB, HAProxy, nginx, F5 |
| uberproxy (sso proxy) | Identity-Aware Proxy | buzzfeed-sso, Pomerium, Envoy Gateway |
| Zanzibar | Zanzibar Research Paper | SpiceDB/authzed, Ory Keto, topaz, Opal, (iam)Keycloak, Warrant, OpenFGA |
| data center hardware | open compute | |
| Jupiter, Starblaze | ||
| B4, Stargate, TE | ||
| USPS, Andromeda | ||
| ESDN | Faucet | |
| broccoli man |
| Google Internal | Google External | Open Source / Real-World |
|---|---|---|
| GFS/Colossus | HDFS, Ceph, GlusterFS, MooseFS | |
| Bigtable | Cloud Bigtable | PrestoDB, Cassandra, HBase, Accumulo, DynamoDB, ScyllaDB |
| Spanner | Cloud Spanner | Vitess, CockroachDB, TiDB |
| ColumnIO / Capacitor | BigQuery storage | Apache Parquet, ORC, Apache Iceberg |
| sstable | levelDB | RocksDB, pebble |
| zippy | Snappy | lz4 |
| RecordIO | Riegeli, TFRecords, & in OR-Tools, szl | stuffed-record-stream |
| Google Internal | Google External | Open Source | SaaS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dremel | BigQuery | Apache Drill, Presto, Spark(sort-of), | AWS Athena, Redshift Spectrum, Snowflake |
| Dremel UI | Redash, Metabase, Apache Superset | ||
| Search (Mustang, Alexandria) | Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Solr, Lucene | algolia | |
| pubsub | pubsub | NATS.io, RabbitMQ, PubNub | AWS SQS/SNS, AWS AppSync |
| MillWheel | Cloud Dataflow | Apache Flink, beam | |
| Colab | Colaboratory | Jupyter | Observable |
| PLX | Google Data Studio | Mode | |
| Monarch | paper | ||
| Napa | paper | ||
| MakerSuite | MakerSuite |
| Google Internal | Google External | Open Source |
|---|---|---|
| prodaccess/LOAS | Keymaster | |
| prod secrets/identity management | chamber, knox, SPIFFE |
| Google Internal | Real-World |
|---|---|
| software engineering at google 1, 2 | Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time |
| SRE @ google | |
| valentine | Vault, 1Password, Lastpass, pass, keeper |
| OWNERS files in repo | github CODEOWNERS |
| snippets | Khan/snippets |
| SnipIt | recordit, CloudApp, dropbox screenshots, Snippyly |
| gpaste | pastee, pastebin |
| stuff (SaaS IT management) | productiv, intello, zylo |
| stuff (Device Management) | jamf |
| device security monitoring | Red Canary |
| beyondcorp | beyondcorp |
| go/ links | golinks, go, Goat, trotto, go-shorten |
| google3 philosophy | innersource, monorepo, YouTube talk |
| doing code review | code review |
| safely sharing 1-time secrets | sendsecure.ly, croc, onetimesecret, privatebin |
| messaging | mattermost, Slack, gchat |
| tech talks | TechTalks @ Google |
| g3doc | writethedocs, docs-as-code |
| GUTS | spoke, freshservice |
| MOMA | glean |
| Google Internal | Real-World |
|---|---|
| OKR | CultureAmp OKR, Lattice Goals, Ally, workboard |
| HRIS/ERP | Namely, BambooHR, Workday, Paylocity |
| peer bonus | bonus.ly |
| kudos | heytaco, slack ++ bot |
| perks | fond |
| talks | Talks @ Google |
| dory | slido, dory(app) |
| edge, people ops training | LifeLabs |
| googlegeist | Culture Amp, humu, tinypulse, peakon |
| Meng | Search Inside Yourself |
| Lazlo | Work Rules |
| Claire Stapleton | Tech Support - existential advice for the modern tech worker |
| books about google | How Google Works, In The Plex, Software Engineering at Google |
also check out xoogler.co, which organizes events, slack channels etc
disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with any of the technologies/products mentioned above.
disclaimer: I left Google a number of years ago so some of the naming might be dated.
(top 24 of 218)
283 followers · starred May 2025
3,843 followers · starred Dec 2019
2,273 followers · starred Oct 2018
1,952 followers · starred Aug 2020
by ex-googlers, for ex-googlers - a lookup table of similar tech & services
15,704
635 commits
updated Jan 12, 2026
A handy lookup table of similar technology and services to help ex-googlers survive the real world :) pull-requests are very welcomed. Please do not list any confidential projects!
For a working example of (some) of these technologies integrated together, see: https://github.com/google/startup-os
See also: System Design Primer, The Hadoop Ecosystem Table, Map AWS services to GCP products, Database of Databases, Google Open Source Glossary
| Google Internal | Google External | Open Source / Real-World |
|---|---|---|
| MapReduce | Apache Hadoop, Spark | |
| Flume | DataFlow | Apache Beam |
| Protocol Buffer | Protobuf, FlatBuffers | Cap'n Proto, Thrift, Avro, Amazon Ion, CBOR, kryo |
| Stubby | gRPC | Thrift, Bolt |
| Chubby | Apache Zookeeper, etcd, HashiCorp Consul | |
| Goops / PubSub | Cloud Pub/Sub | Apache Kafka, Apache Pulsar, Facebook LogDevice |
//base | abseil |
| Google Internal | Google External | Open Source / Real-World |
|---|---|---|
| Borg | Kubernetes | Apache Mesos, Apache Aurora, HashiCorp Nomad |
| GSLB | Cloud Load Balancing - Internal | AWS ELB, Istio, linkerd |
| OnePlatform | API Gateway | Swagger |
| GFE, Maglev, uberproxy | Cloud Load Balancing - HTTPS / External | envoy, AWS ALB, HAProxy, nginx, F5 |
| uberproxy (sso proxy) | Identity-Aware Proxy | buzzfeed-sso, Pomerium, Envoy Gateway |
| Zanzibar | Zanzibar Research Paper | SpiceDB/authzed, Ory Keto, topaz, Opal, (iam)Keycloak, Warrant, OpenFGA |
| data center hardware | open compute | |
| Jupiter, Starblaze | ||
| B4, Stargate, TE | ||
| USPS, Andromeda | ||
| ESDN | Faucet | |
| broccoli man |
| Google Internal | Google External | Open Source / Real-World |
|---|---|---|
| GFS/Colossus | HDFS, Ceph, GlusterFS, MooseFS | |
| Bigtable | Cloud Bigtable | PrestoDB, Cassandra, HBase, Accumulo, DynamoDB, ScyllaDB |
| Spanner | Cloud Spanner | Vitess, CockroachDB, TiDB |
| ColumnIO / Capacitor | BigQuery storage | Apache Parquet, ORC, Apache Iceberg |
| sstable | levelDB | RocksDB, pebble |
| zippy | Snappy | lz4 |
| RecordIO | Riegeli, TFRecords, & in OR-Tools, szl | stuffed-record-stream |
| Google Internal | Google External | Open Source | SaaS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dremel | BigQuery | Apache Drill, Presto, Spark(sort-of), | AWS Athena, Redshift Spectrum, Snowflake |
| Dremel UI | Redash, Metabase, Apache Superset | ||
| Search (Mustang, Alexandria) | Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Solr, Lucene | algolia | |
| pubsub | pubsub | NATS.io, RabbitMQ, PubNub | AWS SQS/SNS, AWS AppSync |
| MillWheel | Cloud Dataflow | Apache Flink, beam | |
| Colab | Colaboratory | Jupyter | Observable |
| PLX | Google Data Studio | Mode | |
| Monarch | paper | ||
| Napa | paper | ||
| MakerSuite | MakerSuite |
| Google Internal | Google External | Open Source |
|---|---|---|
| prodaccess/LOAS | Keymaster | |
| prod secrets/identity management | chamber, knox, SPIFFE |
| Google Internal | Real-World |
|---|---|
| software engineering at google 1, 2 | Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time |
| SRE @ google | |
| valentine | Vault, 1Password, Lastpass, pass, keeper |
| OWNERS files in repo | github CODEOWNERS |
| snippets | Khan/snippets |
| SnipIt | recordit, CloudApp, dropbox screenshots, Snippyly |
| gpaste | pastee, pastebin |
| stuff (SaaS IT management) | productiv, intello, zylo |
| stuff (Device Management) | jamf |
| device security monitoring | Red Canary |
| beyondcorp | beyondcorp |
| go/ links | golinks, go, Goat, trotto, go-shorten |
| google3 philosophy | innersource, monorepo, YouTube talk |
| doing code review | code review |
| safely sharing 1-time secrets | sendsecure.ly, croc, onetimesecret, privatebin |
| messaging | mattermost, Slack, gchat |
| tech talks | TechTalks @ Google |
| g3doc | writethedocs, docs-as-code |
| GUTS | spoke, freshservice |
| MOMA | glean |
| Google Internal | Real-World |
|---|---|
| OKR | CultureAmp OKR, Lattice Goals, Ally, workboard |
| HRIS/ERP | Namely, BambooHR, Workday, Paylocity |
| peer bonus | bonus.ly |
| kudos | heytaco, slack ++ bot |
| perks | fond |
| talks | Talks @ Google |
| dory | slido, dory(app) |
| edge, people ops training | LifeLabs |
| googlegeist | Culture Amp, humu, tinypulse, peakon |
| Meng | Search Inside Yourself |
| Lazlo | Work Rules |
| Claire Stapleton | Tech Support - existential advice for the modern tech worker |
| books about google | How Google Works, In The Plex, Software Engineering at Google |
also check out xoogler.co, which organizes events, slack channels etc
disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with any of the technologies/products mentioned above.
disclaimer: I left Google a number of years ago so some of the naming might be dated.
(top 24 of 218)
283 followers · starred May 2025
3,843 followers · starred Dec 2019
2,273 followers · starred Oct 2018
1,952 followers · starred Aug 2020
