This document discusses messaging queues and platforms. It begins with an introduction to messaging queues and their core components. It then provides a table comparing 8 popular open source messaging platforms: Apache Kafka, ActiveMQ, RabbitMQ, NATS, NSQ, Redis, ZeroMQ, and Nanomsg. The document discusses using Apache Kafka for streaming and integration with Google Pub/Sub, Dataflow, and BigQuery. It also covers benchmark testing of these platforms, comparing throughput and latency. Finally, it emphasizes that messaging queues can help applications by allowing producers and consumers to communicate asynchronously.