That most engineers use the same IDE at Google allows the company to collect a huge amount of telemetry about what features they are using, how often, and how much. Quite similar to the entire codebase being in a single repo, it allows a certain visibility into what is happening that just isn't possible other places.

When Google wanted engineers to use AI features, it turned them on in Cider-V by default. And if you turned them off, later updates would turn them back on. This is very good for your adoption metrics, but might not tell you exactly what you want to know about engineer happiness.

Such a dominant IDE also allows management to ignore the long-tail of users who aren't using it.

"the advantages of having a single, extensible platform become even more obvious" -- imagine the impact that could be unlocked if we got the Android and Chromium workflows into CiderV/Critique!

The article is framed around "all Googlers" but there is still a very large contingent of Googlers who cannot use these tools.

I was surprised to read that Chromebook use at Google was common for engineers. Even if developing remotely I had assumed they'd opt for the most powerful machine possible.

The thing I most love about Cider-V is that moving between it and (often remote) VSCode when working outside google3 becomes mostly painless.