Google released an FAQ detailing Protocol Buffers, along with source code for the Java, Python, and C++ protocol buffer compilers.

Protocol buffers are now Google's lingua franca for data – at time of writing, there are 48,162 different message types defined in the Google code tree across 12,183 .proto files.

What does Protocol Buffers actually mean? Find out inside PCMag's comprehensive tech and computer-related encyclopedia.

Why did Google decide to go Open Source? "We have many other projects we would like to release as [O]pen [S]ource that use protocol buffers, so to do this, we needed to release protocol buffers first.