Google

It should not come as a surprise that Google uses Angular. As the author and primary maintainer of the framework, the Angular team at Google delivers on its promise to create a robust and opinionated framework that can be used throughout one of the largest technology companies on the planet. In fact, Angular echoes how Google works. Google engineering cannot support multiple patterns, practices, and languages; rather, engineering must be focused, intentional, and consistent throughout the organization. The movement of skilled engineers between projects, teams, and locations enables Google to retain employees and to avoid the high costs of retraining. Further, some projects involve more than 500 engineers located globally. The opinionated nature of the Angular framework enables such a broad range of talent to contribute to projects of this size.

Although Google builds the Angular framework and platform of services publicly, every commit to the master branch of the source repository flows into Google’s internal google3 monorepo. The result is that every change to the framework is validated against thousands of build targets and tens of thousands of tests internally at Google. This validates the quality of the contributions made by either the Angular team or the open source community. In fact, the Angular team is responsible for resolving breaking changes that require a modification to any of the hundreds of applications that use Angular at Google. This encourages the team to avoid breaking changes and, if and when necessary, to provide tooling to automate the code modifications.

Google also takes advantage of open source for building both its internal and external applications. One example of this is the state management library called NgRx, which is used in more than 100 applications at Google. As discussed previously in this book, NgRx further enforces a consistent pattern for predictable state of an application through a single-source-of-truth model. This example of collaboration between Google and the open source community is a testimony to Google’s belief in open source and its involvement in the Angular community, and, more broadly, in the web community.

The Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is one of the largest cloud solutions available today, and provides a significant source of revenue for Alphabet, Inc. One of the primary tools that IT and DevOps professionals use to manage their infrastructures within GCP is the Google Cloud Console. This application is mission critical for Google’s customers and requires near-zero downtime. Angular drives the UI for the Google Cloud Console, providing an experience that is consistent, fast, and easy to use. To say that Google has significant skin in the game to get Angular right is, perhaps, an understatement.

FedEx

FedEx is one of the largest carriers in the United States. For decades, it has relied on valuable information technology to track and move millions of packages per day. Historically, FedEx relied heavily on mainframe technology, but today FedEx is moving to the cloud and to the web. Building line-of-business applications that are mission critical drive revenue and profit, and Angular is a part of that story.

Moving a large enterprise from mainframe technology to the cloud requires high-quality talent. Many engineers at FedEx have a strong background in Java and traditional object-oriented languages and structure. Retraining and shifting engineers from these roles toward browser-based development roles with TypeScript and Angular has provided incredible value to the organization, and has enabled the organization to retain its knowledgeable and skilled engineering workforce.

Single-page applications (SPAs) built with open source technology such as Angular enable FedEx to accomplish tasks in tracking international shipments and freight shipments, just to name a few. Migrating from legacy Java fat-client applications to browser-based thin-client applications has enabled FedEx to create UIs today that were difficult or impossible previously. Further, FedEx is able to split the roles of engineering, UI design, and UI development across teams globally. This has enabled UI design to align with business strategy, which is then implemented by UI development teams in an efficient and low-cost manner. Finally, FedEx engineers with years of domain knowledge and experience are able to assemble high-quality SPAs that are delivered on a timely basis.

One of the primary objectives of building applications with Angular at FedEx is testability and quality. When an application drives a business unit at FedEx, it is indeed mission critical. As such, FedEx relies on the robust tooling provided by Angular to develop multiple levels of test suites to ensure high confidence when releasing applications to production environments. FedEx has relied on technology to achieve its mission for decades and continues to rely on technology such as Angular.

Capital One

When you think of Capital One you might think of a credit card company; or, perhaps more broadly, a banking company. But what you might not realize is that Capital One is a technology and software company at its core. The CEO of Capital One, Richard Fairbank, said during an earnings call in 2015, “We’re going to need to think more like technology companies and maybe a little less like banks.” Capital One is investing heavily in technology and software, and Angular is a large component of that investment. Angular drives the UI and experience for all of Capital One’s customers.

Capital One uses Angular for a number of reasons. First is the TypeScript language. Because TypeScript is a strongly typed language that uses object-oriented programming principles, engineers who are shifting away from a more traditional Java or .NET skillset can transition quickly into a frontend role. This reduces hiring and retraining costs for Capital One. Second, the opinionated nature of a full-featured framework enables more than 1,000 engineers to contribute and collaborate throughout the United States, building a suite of internal and external applications that are growing one of the largest brands in banking. Third, the predictable release cadence with a focus on backward compatibility is important for the teams at Capital One. Planning for and updating to the latest major release of Angular is easier than ever before, with some applications at Capital One being updated in a matter of a few days, bringing months of research and development by the Angular team at Google and Angular’s open source contributors into Capital One’s applications and web presence.

Tooling is also important to engineering at Capital One. First, Nx enables Capital One to use a monorepo strategy for managing multiple applications and libraries in a single source-control repository. Second, Angular schematics for code generation and modification further improve the efficiency and performance of engineers. Third, Google’s Lighthouse tool provides Capital One with metrics on the performance of its web applications. Finally, Capital One has built a custom branded component library that enables modularity and a consistent UI design and experience. To build this, Capital One used the CDK that the Angular Material component library is built upon. The CDK is a set of tools for building robust, accessible, and performant components that can be shared and imported into applications throughout Capital One.

Capital One is also investing in the Angular community. Capital One sponsors ng-conf, the largest Angular conference in the world, held annually in Salt Lake City. Capital One also hosts technical meetups and events throughout the United States, and will be organizing a web technology conference featuring speakers and guests from within as well as outside of Capital One. This high level of collaboration and involvement in the community enables Capital One to recruit and hire quality engineers who are focused on building tools, solutions, and applications for Capital One’s growing focus on technology and software.

Summary

Although Angular is widely used for internal and external applications at Google, it is also widely used by organizations and enterprises around the globe that rely on it to meet the needs of their customers, employees, vendors, suppliers, and more. Fortune 100 enterprises such as FedEx and Capital One rely on Angular, and your organization can as well.