Alphabet Bets On GitLab Following Microsoft's GitHub Acquisition

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Even though Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has been using GitHub for the past few years, Microsoft’s purchase of GitHub has prompted the company to back GitLab instead. GitLab is GitHub’s largest competitor.

Alphabet's GitLab Investment

According to a Bloomberg report this week, GitLab recently obtained a $100 million investment from Alphabet's Google Ventures (GV), Iconiq Capital and Khosla Ventures, valuing the company at $1 billion. GitLab’s customers already include some big names, such as Intel, Alibaba and Nasdaq.

Alphabet backed the 350-employee-strong company after it lost a bid to acquire GitHub, the largest sharing and collaboration platform for software developers. Microsoft won that bid and was able to purchase GitHub for $7.5 billion in stock. Alphabet had invested $20 million in GitLab in a previous investment round in October 2017.

GitHub Acquisition, GitLab’s Gain

GitLab saw a large influx of new members on its platform after Microsoft acquired GitHub. Some developers and companies that have been using GitHub since before the Microsoft acquisition have argued that Microsoft has historically not played well with open source projects (such as GitHub and GitLab) and would therefore mishandle the platform.

The concerns may not be completely off-base as Microsoft hasn’t shown great stewardship for similar large acquisitions in the past, such as its $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype and the $7.6 billion acquisition of Nokia. Microsoft had to write-off the Nokia acquisition, and Skype has seen an increasing amount of criticism from users over the past few years, as the company has made moves like messing with the interface and adding advertisements.

“You sometimes see companies start out as open-source and then get alienated from their contributors. We work really hard to make sure that won’t happen," Sid Sijbrandij, GitLab CEO, told Bloomberg in this week's article. 

Alphabet Projects on GitLab

A few years ago, Google started moving most of its projects to the open-source project-friendly GitHub platform, to make it easier not just for its own employees to collaborate, but also for external developers to contribute to Google’s open source projects.

Diane Greene, head of Google’s cloud arm, said in June that the company hopes Microsoft will keep GitHub neutral. However, Alphabet’s new investment in GitLab suggests Google has concerns.

It’s not clear yet if Alphabet will switch all of its projects from GitHub to GitLab. GitLab itself has already moved off Microsoft's Azure cloud platform and to Google Cloud, so more integration and collaboration between the two companies in the future is possible. 

Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers software news and the issues surrounding privacy and security.
5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ThisIsMe
    This is nothing more than Google vs. Microsoft. They are competitors. Why would Google want to pay for a service that's owned by Microsoft? Why would Google want to pay for a service that's running on Microsoft's cloud services? So Google invests a ton of $$$ in another service to offset the cost of moving to their cloud platform and to upgrade features to make them more competitive. Now they need to make that investment worth while, So here comes the anti-Microsoft campaign.

    Google - "Don't use their service. They'll do nefarious things with it. And it'll give you crabs! Come over here to our new service, because we'd never exploit anyone else's open source programming endeavors by integrating them into our "free" products to squash competition and make boat loads of cash."
    Reply
  • kenjitamura
    21337676 said:
    This is nothing more than Google vs. Microsoft. They are competitors. Why would Google want to pay for a service that's owned by Microsoft? Why would Google want to pay for a service that's running on Microsoft's cloud services? So Google invests a ton of $$$ in another service to offset the cost of moving to their cloud platform and to upgrade features to make them more competitive. Now they need to make that investment worth while, So here comes the anti-Microsoft campaign.

    Google - "Don't use their service. They'll do nefarious things with it. And it'll give you crabs! Come over here to our new service, because we'd never exploit anyone else's open source programming endeavors by integrating them into our "free" products to squash competition and make boat loads of cash."

    I feel like in recent years Microsoft has been much less...evil, than what they were previously like and Google is certainly no saint however what Google has working for them is they have still to, yet, fall to the lowest point that Microsoft had once reached.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    21337676 said:
    This is nothing more than Google vs. Microsoft. They are competitors. Why would Google want to pay for a service that's owned by Microsoft? Why would Google want to pay for a service that's running on Microsoft's cloud services? So Google invests a ton of $$$ in another service to offset the cost of moving to their cloud platform and to upgrade features to make them more competitive.
    Couple of issues with that. First, the article says Google bid against MS to buy github, which is probably why the purchase price was so astronomical. So, this move shouldn't be seen as purely reactionary.

    Second, I feel like google did/does have its own site (code.google.com?), but it shared a similar fate as Google Plus - no one uses it. So, to engage the opensource community, I guess they figured you've got to meet developers on their own turf. Their gitlab investment is definitely not about saving themselves the cost of upgrading their own services.

    Finally, all they really have to do against github is not screw up gitlab. There was already a mass exodus of developers and projects, when MS bought github. Too many people don't trust MS. In fact, that exodus probably ramped up gitlab's burn rate, making the need for more investment imperative.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    21337866 said:
    I feel like in recent years Microsoft has been much less...evil, than what they were previously like and Google is certainly no saint however what Google has working for them is they have still to, yet, fall to the lowest point that Microsoft had once reached.
    The only thing that changed at MS is they're more embracing of OSS and Linux. Also, they stopped pushing their phone platform on a wold that doesn't want it.

    But, while they might be less evil in some of their old ways, the spyware in Windows 10 should worry you about new lessons they're learning about being evil. I'd say their closest competitor is now probably Google, and they seem to have adopted much of its playbook, as well.
    Reply
  • siryes
    Similar mishandling, although not so terrible, may be discussed in case of LinkedIn. This too was acquired by Microsoft, and not all the changes on the site are welcomed ones...
    Reply