Google Cloud acquires Bitium | Hacker News Reader

Google Cloud acquires Bitium

techcrunch.com

133 pointscoloneltcb38 comments

Just want to leave a shoutout for CoreOS's dex[1] identity provider. If you need to hook up kubernetes or (any app that speaks oauth2) with SSO and get pluggable backends, I had it working with $EMPLOYER's LDAP infrastructure in 10 minutes.

It also works well with bit.ly's OSS oauth2_proxy[2].

    [1] http://github.com/coreos/dex
    [2] https://github.com/bitly/oauth2_proxy

Clickable links:

[1] http://github.com/coreos/dex

[2] https://github.com/bitly/oauth2_proxy

Keycloak from Redhat is also pretty good:

http://www.keycloak.org/ https://github.com/keycloak/keycloak

For those who (like me) don't know this company:

"Google Cloud announced today that it has acquired Bitium, a company that focused on offering enterprise-grade identity management and access tools, such as single-sign on, for cloud-based applications."

So something similar to Okta it seems.

I hope it’s better than okta in terms of integration and usability.

I really really hate okta.

Oh no :-( Was super happy to use it - I guess we have to start looking for an alternative before google turns it off or requires a Google Apps account to use it.

What did you like about it? What alternatives did you consider?

(I'm super interested in IDPs right now).

Easy to use, many integrations, great design. We chose it over OneLogin which we used before.

Were you using it mostly for your internal apps or mostly to give everyone access to third party apps? What was good about the design?

I'm very familiar with OneLogin and Okta but not at all familiar with Bitium.

I've not heard of Bitium, but we're super happy with Auth0.

Same questions.

I don't think they are the same at all. Bitium is a single sign on solution for Enterprise. Your employee creates a bitium account and then you Grant access to their bitium account to all the necessary services. Like AWS, Dropbox, whatever. Allows you to automate the onboarding process and also easily manage and cut off access to employees when they leave the company.

I actually haven't used it myself. But I was in the same accelerator as them a few years ago in LA.

What is IDPs in this context?

I found "Intrusion Detection and Prevention System" but I don't think that's it.

IdP == Identity Provider. A thing that knows what accounts exist, and how to authenticate for them. Contrast: RP (relying party), which needs the IdP to identify who someone is.

Your IdP can be, like, GSuite auth. RP can be any app that believes GSuite when it makes assertions about who you are, via OpenID Connect or SAML.

Ah. That makes more sense.

I knew it had something to do with authentication providers somehow... but I just missed it.

Thanks!

I have no clue the intent of this buy, but Google Cloud does have an IAM feature today[0]. I'd bet they are looking to pull in talent to help improve that feature, or maybe to make the IAM more than just IAM and handle all the things that Bitium does today.

You have to remember that Google Cloud also has bought StackDriver and Firebase and continues to grow those products.

(disclaimer: Google employee that wishes he worked on cloud)

[0] https://cloud.google.com/iam/

and Kaggle and api.ai and apigee and Qwiklabs and Orbitera and Anvato and you get the point :)

Apologies for taking it offtopic, but can't you just move internally?

Lateral movement here is really easy. But I'm at a smaller Google office, which limits the options I have for other teams without moving to a different location.

EDIT: I ranked location over product area when I picked where to interview, and I'm still happy with my choice. I ended up in payments, which I was not thrilled about when I started, but I've come to enjoy it. There are lots of technical challenges when you are dealing with the payment volume Google moves.

So.. what are they buying here? People, tech or partner relationships?

Souls of the customers.

Do they have a large enough amount of customers for that to be significant? (leaving judgements aside for a moment)

Not the tech, that’s for sure (unless you count a rails app as tech)

Thank God it doesn't have to do anything with Bitcoins!

Thats the first thing that came to mind.

I'm curious if employees of Google acquisitions (real ones not acquihires) are thrilled or just worried about having to audition to a room of Googlers to keep their jobs?

> auditioning in front of a room of Damores

What do you mean by this? I'm having trouble picturing what you refer to.

Lets say I'm a senior engineer at a successful startup. I helped build most of the services we have, I know the technology and I know the product. I'm good at my job.

We get acquired by google.

I now have to jump through the notorious google interview process to essentially keep the job I already know I can do.

From my own personal experience through a Google acquisition: you don't need to go through the interview process. We got calibrated to Google's system, and after that we were as able to move around as any other "real" Google engineer (read: people who went through the interview process.)

Mind you, YMMV depending on division you get acquired into and your position.

In addition to what /u/dguaraglia said, Google interviews are nothing like auditioning in front of a room of people, much less "Damores".

At least your options vested.

Ouch.

Agreed, that would be pretty irritating, but one would assume that the job offers come with significant salary bumps to compensate. They may also be trying to figure out what band to put you in. Google really protects their bands pretty carefully. Having a junior engineer in a senior engineer role can be pretty disruptive.

(Google employee)

Why would the sentiments of "real ones" be different than "acquihires"?

First, there's actually a spectrum from 'acquihire' to 'real'.

Second, as a Google employee who joined via an acquisition that falls somewhere on that spectrum, I was thrilled at the time, I continue to be thrilled to work here, and I think that characterization is inaccurate, unfair and insulting to all the folks who work here including those involved in acquisition diligence.

In fact, the acquahires are the ones who got potentially millions of dollars as a sign on bonus. Very few "real" Google employees could claim that.

Not all acquihires have to interview to keep their jobs. For example, one company I'm familiar with made sure that as part of the acquisition, its employees would not have to go through the Google interview process.

As someone who likely would not pass a Google interview without significant study I wonder how common an occurrence that is. If I had to work full-time (potentially more during a busy acquisition period) and re-read cracking the coding view + deeply understand its concepts + memorize design patterns and API of relevant language(s) - that might be a bit hectic.

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