The first version was called Goobuntu. It was based on the Linux operating system. The in-house Linux desktop was moved to the gLinux operating system. What's the reason? Every machine in our fleet of over 100,000 devices had to be upgraded before the end-of-life date of the OS. It was a big deal. It cost too much because of the time-Consuming need to fully personalize the PCs. It took the better part of a year to upgrade the fleet. There was only one year left until we had to go through the same process over and over again. Hundreds of bugs with requests for help for corner cases were a stress factor for our team. When it became apparent that it was time for a change, it moved to the Linux platform of its choice. The distribution was created by the company. Users and developers should be given the latest updates and patches when they are ready for production.
Google's using what appears to be an automated build system (along with virtualized test suites, and eventually "incremental canarying"), the article points out. The end result? "The entire gLinux development team consists of a single on-duty release engineer position that rotates among team members."
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