Google Builds Bridge With Microsoft in GitHub Partnership

News Analysis Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading 7/26/2018

SAN FRANCISCO – Google Next 2018 – Google is partnering with GitHub on a platform for Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) software development, despite GitHub's connection with competitor Microsoft.

The partnership is based on Cloud Build, a CICD platform Google launched Thursday to help developers build applications with the scalability, flexibility and security required in the cloud.

As part of that service, Cloud Build integrates with the GitHub developer collaboration platform. Cloud Build will work with any repository on GitHub, Melody Meckfessel, VP engineering, Google Cloud, said in a blog post Thursday.

This isn't Google's first date with GitHub; Google is a top contributor of code to GitHub repositories.

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Microsoft plans to acquire GitHub in a $7.5 billion deal announced last month and expected to close by the end of the calendar year, giving Microsoft access to one of the Internet's biggest and most important communities of open source software developers.

The platform and partnership look potentially quite useful for developers, but it's also good corporate strategy and marketing for the cloud providers. Microsoft swears to keep GitHub independent after the deal closes, expected by the end of the calendar year. That oath looks more credible with GitHub's partnership with competitor Google. Google, for its part, cultivates cloud independence, and partnering with a competitor burnishes that image. And both Google and Microsoft lag in the cloud market far behind Amazon Web Services Inc. , so partnering against a common enemy works for them both.

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— Mitch Wagner Executive Editor, Light Reading