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Text _segment_ size. That's executable instructions; presumably it makes a bit more sense that Google would have a binary with 300MB worth of instructions laying around.

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Yes, I get that; I am curious what goes into a binary with 300 MB of code in it.

Google has very large applications, but also they are using static linking: imagine that you statically link all the possible dependencies in a single binary for each application. 300MB is not considered a large binary at Google actually, I don't know what is public but you may look at Table 2 in this publication for instance: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314105281_ThinLTO_S...

I repro here some data, there is a bit more in the paper:

Clang 1.9k Files, 217MB (-g0), 3554MB (-g) Chromium 17.8k Files 706MB (-g0), 7544MB (-g) Ad Delivery 13.8k Files 1073MB (-g0), 7469MB (-g)

(this is the number of object file that are participating in the link).

> they are using static linking

Ah, that would probably be it.

Is Google's rationale for using static linking at this massive scale published anywhere?

I don't know Google's rationale, but static linked libraries usually run a little faster than dynamic linked ones.

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