Google Moves From Search To Inventor

TubHarsh writes "The New York Times reports that Google continues to expand its scope from search engine to inventor. Google assembles the majority of the hardware it uses and deploys at such a large scale, that Google may be 'the world's fourth-largest maker of computer servers, after Dell, Hewlett-Packard and I.B.M.'. The article also states that Google may be entering the chip design market with new employees who were ex-Alpha Chip engineers."

That Link You Ordered, Sir

I don't like being a karma whore but here's a working link to the NYTimes article [nytimes.com]. And, if you're like me and hate ads, try out the text only version [nytimes.com]. That's right, in order to get to read an article without obstruction, you have to pretend to be both an RSS feed AND a printing machine.

Now to comment on something I read in the article:

"At some point you have to ask yourself what is your core business," said Kevin Timmons, Yahoo's vice president for operations. "Are you going to design your own router, or are you going to build the world's most popular Web site? It is very difficult to do both."

I disagree with that. I think it should be re-stated to say "It is very difficult to accomplish more than you have the resources to sustain." It's fatal in thinking that you only do one thing for a business to be successful. A simple analogy would be the farms that I grew up on. No one specialized in one crop or animal. Why? Because sometimes the market would tank for one particular thing and it would tank hard. If you had a distributed investment in produce (like a portfolio) then you would survive most of the market problems. I think Google's strategy is much the same in that they are trying to cement themselves in other technologies--not because they're going to lose the search market--just because it's a smart thing to do.

I think that there's a lot to be said about concentrating on one thing and getting it right. If you do get it right, then it's encouraged to move on to something else. I think Google has found themselves in the top of the search engine market. They found out that their technology doesn't work so well for closed domains (military or business level searching) so I think they just need to keep looking for new ways to stay ahead of the competition. Meanwhile, they have seemingly unlimited resources. Why not try to build your own router?

I mean, fresh graduates are cheap. Some fresh graduates have a lot of ideas and are decent workers while the majority of others are lemons that don't do anything. Why not hire a bunch of them and spend a lot of money weeding them out? I think it's great that Google's taking a stab at other technologies and I honestly think they have a good strategy for doing it.

To comment further on the article, Google makes unreliable machines reliable en masse via redundancy. They are indeed very secretive about their technology but if you want to learn more about their page ranking algorithms or basic technologies, why not read their patents? They always seem to be covered on Slashdot anyway.

Re:That Link You Ordered, Sir

Microsoft won't change their stance on Google.

I've said many times [that] Microsoft's strategy (so far) has been to keep Google labelled a search engine, and only a search engine, (albeit covertly) as long as possible to keep Google hemmed in and avoid letting people begin to see what's up Google's shirt sleeves. This has been a stall tactic. Microsoft has got to have a lot of gerbils running on the wheels to come up with ways to find the silver bullet to put right between Google's eyes. Do they think they'll find it? Probably. Will they? Probably not. Should they be scared? Yes.

I don't think it's worked, but it's the only tactic Microsoft knows. After all, their primary arsenal has always been Huey, Dewey and Louie (Marketing, Sales, and PR). When Microsoft runs out of arrows in its quiver, it'll become the one thing it has thought would never happen: become just another company, just as IBM became when Microsoft didn't renew their contract ('89? '90?)for a joint OS and it became Windows & OS/2. IBM just wasn't able to get the sell-through Microsoft got with Windows, and Microsoft was the new king of the mountain.

What's hurting Microsoft isn't they came late to the show (avoided during the most infamous "Summer of Bill" but they've had to grow from the desktop up to a global perspective, but that Google hasn't even worried about the desktop (so far). They got started at the global level and just focused upon information management, leaving a browser, essentially any browser, as the interface. I see it to be what happened to Encyclopædia Britannica when everything was electronic and they were left thinking about their next hardcopy print run, then trying to get an electronic format (and people buying CDs and DVDs) vs. something such as Wikipedia which started online.

I'm not saying every company or product which starts online will always be better, but the odds are against a hard world company|product being able to prevent or leapfrog a company which doesn't have to worry about a bridge from the past to the future and not lose sight of both balls in the air.

Another good example is BlockBuster and Netflix. Blockbuster's underlying algorithm (business model) was based upon late return fees. NetFlix comes along such that brick & mortar means nothing, reducing all of the financial obligations which go along with it, including a dependence upon those late fees. BlockBuster suddenly realized they were getting dusted in all but impulse rentals and had to do something. First, they tried to pull a fast one over everyones' eyes by declaring "no late fees" whilst slipping a hand into your wallet. When they got caught, they realized they'd better do something...and fast. So they picked the most successful video rental business model they could find on short notice: NetFlix. Just a price war.

Lots of other stories could be listed as well (e.g., Amazon vs. B&N, Border's, etc.)

Google chips?

Now that does interest me. If they can show the same level of industrious innovation that they have in other fields, I'm excited about the impact this may have on the server-market, if nothing else.

I just hope that, if they are developing chips in-house (and if they are, I expect them to be cheap and powerful), they are less tight-fisted than they are with their other technical innovations. A new power-player in the CPU market would be great for us end-users

Seriously though, if they start manufacturing all their own hardware from scratch, they're probably going to be more independent than any major computer-based international in recent history. *exaggeration ends*

Re:Google chips?

Hmm... I'd kind of like to buy a RAID card that is accelerated for database and/or search work. I mean, issue high-level commands to the controller hardware, and let it collect the results while the main processor is doing something else. We're getting to the point where classical RDBMS systems are pretty well-understood, and the average RAID controller has a fair bit of hardware already. How far are we from having some relatively simple processor with an inflated L1 cache and high clock rate that does the heavy database work (including RAID/transaction logging) before it even reaches your machine?

It makes sense to do this, because database performance is big business -- just look at what some companies spend on licensing Oracle! As long as you're not worried about spatial queries, you could probably even get by without an FPU. There might be a lot of justification for this.

Re:Google chips?

The article also states that Google may be entering the chip design market with new employees who were ex-Alpha Chip engineers.

lemme guess, the chips are gonna be called... "Beta"?

Silicon? Yes. CPUs? Maybe.

One of the advantages of the Opteron platform, as we saw recently, is that it is easy to plug in dedicated, specialised, coprocessors. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a lot of Google's work could be done more efficiently on a specialised stream processor; even things like SSL for gmail etc. run a lot faster (and much faster-per-watt, which is what really counts in an operation that scale) on dedicated silicon than on a general purpose CPU.

Much as I'd like to see the Alpha return, backed by Google (or pretty much anyone else. The death of PALCode was a sad day for the industry), it doesn't seem likely. The Alpha approach was to build the fastest chip possible; in terms of performance-per-watt or performance-per-dollar, it didn't do so well.

Re:Silicon? Yes. CPUs? Maybe.

But then just how many specialized chips does one need? With personal computers it's getting a little out of hand. First we have graphics processors, and now physics processors. Oh, and we also have network cards that allow you to offload the entire TCP/IP stack to their own processors. Oh, and sound cards have hardware mixers, so you don't have to mix the sound in software on your general purpose CPU. Oh, and those video capture cards convert everything to mpeg in hardware, so you don't need your CPU for that either. All I need is a special processor for compiling code, and I could go right back to using a 486 as my main processor, since it wouldn't have anything to do anymore.

Boycott Google ;-)

Friends, remember that Google is the America hating empire [shelleytherepublican.com].

This new wave of innovation probably uses Linux (created by a European communist) [shelleytherepublican.com] with a sordid history [shelleytherepublican.com]. No doubt this is part of an insiduous plot to destroy the valuable patents of The Sco Group.

Their so-called "inventions" have already led to a huge upturn in hacking, eponymously named "Google Hacking" [informit.com]. All true patriots must support tougher sentences [shelleytherepublican.com] for such evil terrorists [shelleytherepublican.com].

Re:Boycott Google ;-)

You might wish to develop a sense of humour and/or the ability to detect satire. Of course, the fact that shelleytherepublican can be mistaken for a real conservative blogger does cast an rather sad reflection on the state of political discourse in America.

I for one...

...welcome our new Google - Cyberdyne Systems overlords.

When will the Terminator-1 chip have been designed ?

Owning the supply chain

I don't think we should think of this as a move that Google may 'sell' the machines they make, aside from selling Google search or app appliances one day. The vast majority of chips they would be making are probably to 'own the supply chain' for their own massive server systems. This is similar in concept to the early Ford Motor Company that owned the steel mills, etc. Google just wants the lowest net cost per computing cycle, and if Dell wants to earn a profit selling them computers in bulk, it might be cheaper for Google to bring that profit in-house.

Technology Incubator

I think they're just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks, much like VCs do. But their doing it all in-house, hoping to come up with the next big thing. And the thing after that.

Re:Technology Incubator

I think they're just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks, much like VCs do. But their doing it all in-house, hoping to come up with the next big thing. And the thing after that.

Well, if you want to innovate, or research, you have to do that. VCs don't do that, they just hope that the pack of people they give money won't just waste that money but actually come up with an idea that sticks to that wall. In-house research is not comparable with what VCs do with startups which usually base their entire future on one idea and if that fails, they fail. In research every idea that you prove is a failure is in fact a success since it gives you valueable knowledge and experience which you can use in the next trials if you have the money for it, and well, they have the money.

well duh

It was part of a university to begin with.

BBC says: Google to remain focused on search

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5140066.stm [bbc.co.uk] go figure

This kind of thing that keeps us loving google

I think google is just an amazing company, they hire some of the worlds top developers, build their own servers and apparently their own cpus now just to make sure that everything runs smoothly. Couple that with froogle, google maps and google earth, summer of code and submission of code back to open source projects such as wine. It's a shame that there aren't more companies like google that do everything they can to put their customers first and their profits later.

Re:This kind of thing that keeps us loving google

Umm....
Hey I like Google and I do think it is a good company but please throw in a few facts along with the extreme cheering.
1. They make a ton of money. I.E. profits from advertising. I will admit that it is some of the least offensive advertising in the planet but they are ads none the less.
2. Their search engine is closed source. Yep you got it baby cakes every bit as closed source as Microsoft Office and Windows.
3. China.

As I said, I like Google. I would work for them if they offered me a job. They are not perfect and frankly we are not their customers! We are no more their customers than wheat is a farmers customers. They harvest us and sell us to their advertisers. The people that buy Google ads are Google's customers.
We are Google's product.

Big plans - big resources

As Google grows and start giant projects (like Google Earth) it requires more and more resources. It is natural if they start building own computers, it will be the base for new projects. I like Google because they are not afraid of global large-scale projects.

Investing that pile of cash

Google appear to be investing their pile of cash in a very interesting way: They encourage their engineers to spend 20 percent [wikipedia.org] of their time on unrelated work. Since they have some really bright heads in their workforce, they can be said to re-investing their pile of cash into ideas formed by their own employees. You know - all those half-baked, half-related ideas you get when you work on a project: They actually give you time and resources to refine and pursue them. And guess what - some of them turn out to be viable business ideas for the company. So, from a human-resources point-of-view, it's a stroke of genious. They realize more of the potential within their work-force.

They also probably reduce thebrain-drain of their talented employees - since working on Google must be very, very rewarding for someone with an imaginative mind but not a lot of organizational know-how.

You're forgetting one Manufacturer

Google may be 'the world's fourth-largest maker of computer servers, after Dell, Hewlett-Packard and I.B.M.'.

You're forgetting one Manufacturer: the NSA.

Fourth largest?

Very unlikely, with these numbers. Unless you mean perhaps "a distant fourth."

IBM had server sales of more than five billion dollars [itjungle.com] last year (or three billion, if you don't count mainframes). Even lowly Sun beats out Dell [com.com], which comes in at almost $1B.

Keep in mind that this is just for one year. Pick your favorite guess for how large Googles server farm is and divide by the average age of those machines. Do you still think they're assembling more than a billion dollars of hardware per year?

Can Google invent AI?

Can Google [visitware.com] become an artificial intelligence [artilectworld.com]?
Google certainly has the data to whet the appetite of an AI Mind [blogcharm.com], but first Google would need an AI Engine such as Mind.Forth [sourceforge.net] to impose order on the data, so that Google would not just store the data but would know the web of data.
Maybe Google will trigger a Technological Singularity [blogcharm.com].

The chip business..

Is it just me, or does the microprocessor business seem a REALLY bad one to get into right now. Maybe 30, 20 or even 10 years ago, it wouldn't have been such a bad option. But with Intel and AMD going forward in this perpetual juggernaught race, it seems like anyone getting into this business is Dead On Arrival. Transmeta Corp anyone? Dan

Next from Googlle...

The Google Alpha Beta

Google is the best tech, not search, company

Everyone is foolish in only seeing the search aspect of Google. The reason search is so prevalent on our minds is that Google took advantage of the greatest tech out of the gate, unlike MS, and made it the best first. Now they have time to focus on everything. We have to reevaluate our views on technology from desktop centric to the Network like Sun says. Google made sure search was done right first as it is the most important technology Google is the phone company! It's great they are creating chips with Sun hopefully open source as I would think they are using the Sun Spark program. The future looks bright.

An idea I've suggested

Google assembles the majority of the hardware it uses...

On several occasions I've suggested to customers that they consider building their own servers. Going by the look on their face you'd think I'd just asked directions to Mars. I'll usually let them ba-humbug the idea for a while before informing them that Google does it and always has. That usually gets them started asking questions instead of telling me why it's such a bad idea.

That wouldn't work for most companies, but if they've got a technology core group that's big enough or if they're a tech oriented company, it's the most flexible way to go and not that much more work. Some standard box configurations and parts lists keeps all the components working together.

I wouldn't even consider buying a server for my own stuff. If there were an ATX type standard for laptops, I'd build those as well.

Driad?

WTF is "Driad", Gates claims it's Microsoft's answer to MapReduce?

Also, sadly the article does not mention that Google runs almost entirely on Linux. There's room for a couple of Bill Gates quotes on how Microsoft's solutions are better, but no mention of the fact that Google has no need for any of them.

Thin Clients

What is Google doing with Sun?

Internet based word processing and spreadsheets, email on the internet, a google service for everything else... It wouldn't surprise me if the next generation of personal computers are nothing more than a SunRay type thin client plugged into the internet, Sun helps with the hardware and google services will do the rest... it seems to be the vision of both companies...

I predicted

I knew it! Of course, we all did. I knew Google was going to get into computer sales sooner or later. I wonder when they're coming out with their Linux distro... you know it's coming.

Vertical integration

It's rather interesting to see all the economic geniuses get together here on Slashdot and tell the world just how good their plans are. Integrate this, expand or die, etc. Is this new thinking? No. Has it been tried before? Yes. Most successfull as a whole is perhaps the Japanese Keiratsus (or how ever you spell that). Conglomerates in other words. How many of those do you see these days in the western world? How many are profitable? GE could be held as an example of success until lately. Don't quote me on it, but I seem to remember them strugling with losses as well now. What about the Japanes then? Well, they are slowly getting around to it as well. Not by choice I'd say, but dragged to the conclution by economic reality.

If you read nothing else in this post, at least read this.
The thing that most people don't get is the fact that you can integrate vertically until you are blue in the face, you still have the exact (more or less) same demands for ROC. The logical error goes something like this: If google owns the CPU manufactoring part as well then they can buy the CPUs at cost. NOT TRUE. I'll say that again in case anyone missed it. NOT TRUE. You see, the investors, whos money google would use to build this business, will have the same demands on interest as the investors that let AMD play with their money. You can pretend that you can buy "at cost" but it is never possible. In the end it always catches up with you.
Now you can stop reading.

Sure, there are economies of scale and such. Those are much better put to use by integrating horizontally though. And that has a nasty tendency to hurt consumers down the road.

The same goes for "expand to new areas or die". Sure, that is true. The thing is though, do we want a company to survive if they are not profitable? Why not have two companies that each do A and B respectively instead of one that does both A and B. As can be seen with Microsoft (since it's a good topic to bring up at Slashdot) there is little point in having one area subcidizing another area. Let the investors put half their money in company A and half in company B instead of having it all in the same company. Worst case scenario is that you do AS WELL as a combined company. Again, that is worst case scenario. There can only be better. Stop getting so attached to company names, because that is all they are. Names! The people in them come and go, the name remains. Who here has started to hate certain parts of Google because they now have MS execs? I'd bet none. Why? No reason!

GPU = Google Processing Unit

If Google indeed decides to get involved in hardware (or software that gets compiled into hardware), I welcome the decision, and joyfully look forward to any innovations that they might come up with.

Maybe one day we have a GPU (Google Processing Uni) inside our PCs that has special hardware support for indexing, retrieval and text processing in general. Independently of Google or any particular vendor, the theoretical question that intrigues me is: what operations would you like to have built in to aid the search business?

PageRank in microcode? Porter stemmer as an assembler instruction?

For several decades, CPU design has been driven mostly by traditional numerical concerns. While ranking algorithms certainly are based on numerical principles as well, it remains to be investigated whether there are operations that are worth providing at hardware level, or (more likely) completely new architectures.

Note that their MapReduce paradigm of parallel data processing is close to data flow machines in some sense, and while these were not a success at the time, times have changed (it's always a question of boundary conditions).

What do the colors mean?

I apologize for going off on a tangent, but does anyone know if there's a meaning behind the colors of the letters in Google's logo? They don't follow the Roy G. Biv rule... The closest thing I could find to an answer was:
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2004_01_02_ind ex.html#107307127760339576 [outer-court.com]
but that's not an answer.

Re:Google OS

but will it run Linux?