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googlecloudplatform/microservices-demo

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TLDR

A sample e-commerce app with 11 microservices in different languages, running on Kubernetes, built by Google to teach cloud-native architecture.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      E-commerce demo app
      11 microservices
      Multi-language codebase
      Kubernetes deployment
    Architecture
      gRPC communication
      Service mesh traffic
      Containerized services
      Cloud-native design
    Tech Stack
      Go, Python, Java
      C#, Node.js
      Kubernetes
      Google Cloud
    Use Cases
      Learn microservices
      Study Kubernetes
      Explore GCP tools
      Reference architecture
    Learning Path
      Deploy to GKE
      Inspect services
      Experiment locally
      Scale infrastructure

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Deploy a multi-service application to Kubernetes and learn how services communicate via gRPC.

USE CASE 2

Study how large companies structure microservices in different programming languages within a single system.

USE CASE 3

Explore Google Cloud products like GKE, Service Mesh, Spanner, and Memorystore with a real working example.

USE CASE 4

Experiment with scaling, traffic management, and observability in a containerized environment.

Tech stack

GoPythonJavaC#Node.jsKubernetesgRPCGoogle Cloud

Getting it running

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1day+

Requires Kubernetes cluster setup, multiple language runtimes, and Google Cloud infrastructure to run all 11 microservices.

Apache 2.0, use freely for any purpose, including commercial, as long as you include the license and copyright notice.

In plain English

Online Boutique is a sample e-commerce web application built by Google to demonstrate how modern cloud infrastructure works. Users can browse products, add items to a cart, and go through a checkout process, but it is not a real store. Its purpose is educational: to show developers and architects how to build and run a cloud-native application using Google's tools. What makes it interesting is its architecture. The app is deliberately split into 11 separate services, each responsible for one function (cart storage, product catalog, payments, shipping, email confirmations, recommendations, ads, and so on), and each written in a different programming language, Go, Python, Java, C#, and Node.js. These services talk to each other using gRPC, a high-performance communication protocol. This multi-language, multi-service setup is a realistic example of what large software companies actually build. The whole system runs on Kubernetes, which is software for managing and scaling many containerized services across a cluster of machines. Google uses this demo to showcase their Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Cloud Service Mesh (for managing traffic between services), and other Google Cloud products like Spanner (a database), Memorystore (a cache), and their Gemini AI. You would use this project as a learning reference if you are studying microservices architecture, Kubernetes, or Google Cloud. It gives you a real, deployable application you can inspect and experiment with. The quickstart deploys the entire app to a Google Cloud account with a handful of terminal commands.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
How do I deploy the Online Boutique microservices demo to Google Kubernetes Engine using the quickstart commands?
Prompt 2
Show me how the cart service and product catalog service communicate with each other using gRPC in this repo.
Prompt 3
What are the 11 microservices in Online Boutique and what does each one do?
Prompt 4
How can I modify one of the services (like the recommendation service) and redeploy it to my Kubernetes cluster?
Prompt 5
Explain how the service mesh in this demo manages traffic between the microservices.
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Generated 2026-05-18 · Model: sonnet-4-6 · Verify against the repo before relying on details.