Protocol Buffers, often shortened to Protobuf, is a language-neutral, platform-neutral, extensible mechanism for serializing structured data. It's similar to XML or JSON, but is smaller, faster, and simpler. You define how you want your data to be structured once, then you can use special generated source code to easily write and read your structured data to and from a variety of data streams and using a variety of languages. Protocol Buffers are particularly useful for developing network protocols and data storage formats. They are widely used in microservices architectures for inter-service communication due to their efficiency and strong typing. The schema for the data is defined in a .proto file, which is then compiled using the Protocol Buffer compiler (protoc) to generate code in various programming languages like C++, Java, Python, Go, and more. This generated code provides methods for serializing and deserializing data according to the defined schema. This ensures data consistency and reduces the risk of errors during data exchange. The binary format is compact and efficient for both storage and transmission.