Hopefully a more recent Googler will answer you. In 2013 they were granted often...

brlewis on Jan 10, 2019 | parent | context | favorite | on: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

Hopefully a more recent Googler will answer you. In 2013 they were granted often, so long as they didn't compete with a Google product. I had to close my photo sharing site off to new users when I started at Google.