Protocol Buffers (a.k.a., protobuf) are Google's language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible mechanism for serializing structured data. You can find protobuf's documentation at https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/
Snaps are applications packaged with all their dependencies to run on all popular Linux distributions from a single build. They update automatically and roll back gracefully.
Snaps are discoverable and installable from the Snap Store, an app store with an audience of millions.