GitHub Competitor, Cloud Source Repositories, Launched By Google

Earlier this year Google closed down its own project hosting site, Google Code, in an assumed move to let GitHub and BitBucket to become the dominate code sharing and publishing services, otherwise known as social networking for programmers. However, the move away from project hosting only a lasted for a brief few months and Google is now back with something called Cloud Source Repositories, now available on the Google Cloud Platform. CSR allows teams and users to upload, build, and deploy applications for the web and mobile.

It’s Google’s plan to be there every step of the way during the development process, creating IDE programs like Android Studio to write the code, Cloud Source Repositories to edit and upload the code, and its own cloud platform to host it. This is expected to give Google more fight against the current market leader, Amazon Web Services, who launched a similar project back November 2014. Microsoft also offers Virtual Studio Online with unlimited service for customers working on the Azure platform. It seems as though everybody is pushing for project hosting programs to keep programmers involved.

Google didn’t make any announcements about Cloud Source Repositories as first noted by Venture Beat when the news broke on June 25th. In fact, CSR has been available for a month now, unbeknownst to media outlets everywhere since Google decided not to share any information about the project. It’s speculated the decision had something to do with the removal of Google Code.

GitHub is still undoubtedly  the most prominent project hosting site out there, valued at $2 billion and expanding. GitHub, however, has a problem: it’s surrounded on all sides by companies by companies willing to lose a lot of money to win customers. It will be interesting to see if GitHub manages to develop some type of counter-offense to deal with this potential issue.