Zanzibar Demystified: How Google Answers 'Can This User Do This?'
Authorization looks like a one-line if statement until you run it ten million times a second across every product Google ships. Zanzibar is the system that made that question fast, consistent and global. This walks from the naive permission check to relationship-based access control, the tuple model, consistency with zookies, and the open-source heirs like OpenFGA you can actually run today.
#Authorization #ReBAC #Security #Distributed-Systems #OpenFGA
July 18, 2026