Wow. Out of curiosity just checked if the other cloud providers have it - both Azure and GCP have this feature already. Azure got it ~ Feb 2020, GCP Feb 20201.

Disclosure: I used to work on GCE (and was adjacent to the serial port work).

IIRC, we launched interactive serial port access sometime in late 2014. For example, mbrukman answered a SO question on Jan 2, 2015 with connect-to-serial-port [1]. I don’t recall when we gained fancier IAM controls for it, but we’ve had it forever (and I think getting / view only was there at public launch).

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27734763/how-do-you-acce...

I did the security review of the GCE serial port back when it first came into existence. We probably know each other. The tech industry really is tiny.

Yeah I just checked and you’re both listed as authors on the design doc (as am I, amusingly, though I really don’t remember doing anything particularly useful or significant for it).

You did the original demo/work! I’m really just taking credit for it :).

Edit: and really the person who did the most work isn’t mentioned here (that’d be up to them)

I will almost guarantee you two know each other (as someone who knows both of you from Google :)

Pictured: three Google engineers happily doxxing each other (c. 2021, colorized)

I feel like our usernames covered that...

Can we turn it into an NFT and get more Cereal boxes?

"Google-O's: Now With Even More O's!"

lol yes

Same feeling after the cloudshell release around 4 year waiting for it