How does Google do it?

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Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday April 25, 2004 @01:18AM from the stuff-to-read dept.

Doc Tagle writes "With Google reportedly on the verge of going public, more and more people want to know what makes Google tick. The Observer, serves up the answers to our questions."

7 of 261 comments (clear)

How does Google do it? by Talez · 2004-04-25 01:23 · Score: 5, Funny

PigeonRank! Duhhhhhh
the reason they keep their mouth shut by gevmage · 2004-04-25 01:50 · Score: 5, Funny

It's quite possible the reason that they keep their mouth shut about their capabilities is to avoid the NSA (or someone like them) to come calling. After all, they basically have a distributed database of the entire net, which they index efficiently on a continuous basis. Who wants to bet that their system is better at gathering intelligence than any government agency in the world?
On the other hand, here's the conspiracy theory version: what if Google IS the NSA? The IPO is a smokescreen to try to avert attention. The reason they can't show their true capability is that when the company goes public, only 20% of their hardware will actually go into the public company "Google", the rest of the hardware will still be hidden and a part of the NSA's system. :-)
[For the humor impaired, I'm just joking, but it does make you wonder...]

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Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
Re:Additional questions by nacturation · 2004-04-25 02:14 · Score: 5, Funny

Google search for the letter "a" resulted in 3,530,000,000 hits [search took 0.12 seconds].

Neat. I wonder what doing a Google search would return for other letters:

"c" -- 299,792,458 hits
"e" -- 2.71828183 hits
"h" -- 6.626068 × 10^-34 hits
"i" -- sqrt(-1) hits
"k" -- 1.3806503 × 10^-23 hits

Looks like Google is definitely busted. They should fix these bugs.

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Re:Google is faltering by Decameron81 · 2004-04-25 02:16 · Score: 4, Funny

I bet you wouldn't know you need more than an unsigned 32 bit integer before you hit it.

On a side note I would really like to know which one is page number 1.

Diego Rey

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diegoT
Re:Interesting by Psychic+Burrito · 2004-04-25 04:15 · Score: 4, Funny

Google is cracking down on dupes? Oh no, Slashdot is doomed! :-)
Re:Openness is the first casualty of going public? by AhBeeDoi · 2004-04-25 06:43 · Score: 3, Funny

With google: before I give them my money, I would like to know how many servers they have, how close to capacity they are, what softwares they use (compatibility issues).
Not to mention source code for custom applications, maintenance schedules, software upgrade schedules, standard permissions settings, root passwords, type and model of CPU cooling fans used, average uptimes and other relevant information which all prudent investors need.
Doing half as well as Google by alien_tracking_devic · 2004-04-25 08:26 · Score: 4, Funny

from the artice:
"Google manages to achieve this with sophisticated techniques for rippling changes through the cluster, yet achieves 100 per cent uptime. This is serious stuff, and there are a lot of IT managers out there who would give their eye-teeth to be able to do it half as well."
Sigh...as an IT manager I can only dream of 50% uptime. Damn you, Google!