The OpenStack Foundation has no shortage of big-name vendors to help support its mission, but the latest addition to the list is turning heads nonetheless. Google Inc. has a become a corporate sponsor of the free cloud operating system this morning in a bid to help foster the adoption of the technologies underpinning its infrastructure-as-a-service ambitions.

And in particular, containers, the lightweight virtualization format that has taken the industry by storm in recent months and represents one of the few areas where the search giant can boast something in the way of a lead over arch-rival Amazon Web Services. Google is one of the first companies to have adopted the technology on a large scale and its open-source Kubernetes project is the de facto standard for orchestrating such clusters.

OpenStack advocates reacted enthusiastically to the news. “Best news of the day! There’s a huge opportunity ahead to make the experience seamless as containers and OpenStack come together,” said Radhesh Balakrishnan, General Manager of OpenStack at Red Hat, Inc., in a tweeted message. Added OpenStack Co-Founder Mark Collier, “Google’s container knowledge is unrivaled. Big news!”

The search giant’s entry into the OpenStack Foundation expands upon an existing partnership with Mirantis, Inc., the self-proclaimed top distributor of the platform, to integrate the two technologies in a deal that was originally announced last year. Google engineers will now presumably take on a much more direct role in pursuing its goals, which is good news for the community.

It’s also a potential stepping stone toward much broader initiatives, such as enabling a higher degree of compatibility between Google Cloud Platform and OpenStack. The platform-agnostic nature of containers makes that possible in theory, and the search giant’s strategic goals may very well turn it into reality.

Google has “a great track-record of contributing to open source projects, and Kubernetes brings a huge piece to help build scalable container-based infrastructure,” said Cloudcast co-host Brian Gracely. But he cautioned that Google also has a track record “of not always staying committed long-term,” to enterprise initiatives. “Many people will be watching to see if that changes as they attempt to bring together Kubernetes and OpenStack for next generation applications,” he said.

Whereas Amazon is trying to pull every workload into its public cloud, Google is embracing hybrid operating models that combine on- and off-premise resources, having recently teamed up with AppScale Inc. to let customers move applications off its platform to their local environments. Expanding the effort to OpenStack, the linchpin of the world’s largest private clouds, would represent a natural continuation of that push.

Google Product Manager and Kubernetes co-developer Craig McLuckie explained how Google is harmonizing Kubernetes and VMware on SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE at VMWorld 2014 last August. Watch the interview below (18:30).

Photo via OpenStack Foundation