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Google Plans to Reveal Some of its Code
Andy Beal writes "According to Australia's The Age, Google plans to reveal some of the code it uses to great success. It says '
"The time has come for Google to "give something back", Wayne Rosing, the company's vice-president of engineering, told students while on a recruiting drive in Melbourne last week.
"There have been a lot of conversations in the company in the past two months about (how) . . . it's time for us to give something back. So our technical director, Craig Silverstein, has started a project to look at all the Google code and start figuring out what parts of it we want to give back," Rosing said.'"
We have heard so much talk recently about the "open sourcing" of this piece of software and that piece of software that I just don't know if we should believe any of it anymore.
While Google is probably telling more of a truth than Sun is how do we really know until we see the code?
If a team is now just determining which code should be released we may not see anything useful come of this for months or even more. How about we hold off on these stories until we see something more than just a press release.
I whole-heartedly support open source and I think it's great they're going to reveal some of their code, but I don't feel that Google owes the community anything; they already provide top quality services.
Google's done so much for the quality of web searching that I think they've already given us far more back than I could ever ask for. The only thing I could ask of them is to keep up the good work, and try and keep pagerank useful by stopping exploiters who falsely boost ranks. Other than that, some good old free thinking and continual innovation for the web, which is what they do all the time, is little to ask for. I just hope the momentum doesn't die.
- tristan
I'm sure google isn't stupid, but I'd hate for them to reveal anything that the search engine "optomizers" will leverage to further spam the search results.
I love Google, and think this is an excellent idea, but geeks owe Google, not vice-versa. Geeks (and normal users as well) depend on Google. While it could be said that Google does the same, and makes its money from geeks and users, they do not, IMHO owe us anything.
Bored? Why not join a decent mess
They already showed the algorithm they use for Pagerank, and let's see... they have thousands of systems all hooked together, that process terabytes of data every month. That sounds more like hard work and money than magic. The magic will be how they are keeping Microsoft at bay.
stuff |
Pagerank has been described before. It's not a secret. Possibly they are using a fine-tuned version of it, but still...
I miss my rubber keyboard.(Homepage)
With all the possibilities for type-specific search engines, this seems like a great step forward. Perhaps some day, I will be able to hum a song I heard on the radio into my computer and find links to the performer, composer, etc. If I am designing a new machine, I might be able to search for pre-existing components over large networks instead of through local libraries. Mmm...
Live free or die
Could this be an extension of the google API set ?
http://www.google.com/apis/
Co-inciding with a launch of gmail, this could lead to a slew of advanced 3rd party gmail apps like 'pop goes the gmail'
Seriuosly folks, they probaly make me 30% more effective because I can find the information I need more quickly than anyplace else.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
The actual source surely isnt actually *that* important. It might have been way back in the beginning, but not so much anymore.
..."
I'm quite convinced that the code itself is relatively simple, each node handling its own small piece of the puzzle.
It would take years before anyone actually making use of the code could build up the infrastructure and reputation that google has got, in the meantim,e we could make some seriously funky projects out of it.
I would love to be able to incroporate google search algorythms and procedures into (for instance) an SQL query, and allow searching of the myriad of OFFLINE data we have here.
"select (feeling_lucky) from customerrecords
At the very worst, the code becomes an academic curiosity, at the best, googles algorythm becomes as well adapted as Huffman coding or the bubblesort.
liqbase
Google provides an ad-supported service...for a profit. They are about to become a publicly-held company with the intention of...continuing to make a profit. I don't believe that Google owes the open source community anything---some may feel it's noble, but I think that it helps promote a certain "debtor" feeling, as if success should bring out timidity and apologies and giveaways. Google's competitors would be better served by innovating on their own and sticking it to them with better search results and more value-added features.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
Well it is common knowledge that they run their system off of (lots and lots of) Linux servers. So maybe that is what they mean by "give back"
Home Automation & Linux -- now I know I'm a geek
I totally disagree. I think the GoogleFS is a much more valuable commodity than the search algos. I mean, frankly, I doubt think the search algos are that brilliant, past the initial lightbulb of PageRank... just refinements and optimizations. The tough part is harnessing the -insane- computing power necessary to serve the world's searching needs, and doing it cheaply.
Despite that, I do hope you're right, and maybe you are... since the distributed FS/OS they've developed is, like I said, so much more valuable. What good would search algorithm descriptions do anyone except aid their competition? I can't stick Google's algorithms into anything I have... but a nifto OS that can combine a few computers and let me run stuff across them trivially? -THAT'S PRETTY COOL-
"Is there anything Google can't do? Seriously, how cool is that?"
Just about as cool as when Apple, Sony, and even Microsoft (with restrictions) released some of their code. It's nothing new -- companies do it all the time for good PR and to help jumpstart initiatives. Question is, what code are they going to release, how much and when?
Google doesn't have to give anything back, at least not to me. It's enough for me that they are by far the best search engine; lightning fast, accurate, comprehensive, free and with no obtrusive advertising...
This is a bit odd; I suspect they said more than they should have.
Google is in their pre-IPO quiet period; the SEC rules for this are fairly strict about forward-looking statements. I'm surprised this was mentioned at all.
It's a lot like slashcode, really. Lots of great websites run slash, but none of them have the popularity or following that the original has.
Plus, Slashdot gets to "brand" websites with it's look, feel, and system. No matter how much you skin slashcode, it still feels like slashdot in the end, even if it wasn't intentional.
Read the slashdot FAQ, and you see exactly the same kind of response you would expect. Good luck making your own with just the source!
Google makes alot of money from providing this service to companies already. See the ever-so-cool Google Search Appliance. I don't know why they'd cannibalize that market.
A patent has nothing to do with code or implementations. If it's patented, you would not be allowed to implement it even if you had spent your entire life in the cellars of a 300-year-old monastery, receiving only food and water from the vow-of-silence monks, and seeing, reading and hearing nothing about the outside world whatsoever.
Copyright is a different matter, but with patents, you're screwed either way.
As make extensive use of linux, might I suggest that they include a tiny picture with the text "Google is powered by linux" with the search results? Maybe at the bottom, where you can't barely see it... but it will be enough to raise linux visibility a lot, if google users (i.e.: every internet user) realizes that linux is powerful enough for google.
My journal. Mainly about freedom.
It might be a good idea and in their own interest for them to contribute financially to some of the free "core" technologies they use. I don't see them in the osdl memberlist for example.
Google owns an almost complete archive of Usenet, even from times when people did not realize that their conversations would end up in a publically accessible archive.
If the conversations were posted to a publically accessible forum, what's the big deal about a publically accessible archive?
Google's been on top for too long. Microsoft and other search engines are really starting to push competition. But even if they equal or surpass Google's services, they still won't succeed (lawfully, at least). Google has something none of them have, and something most of them can never get with their histories: Trust.
Every article i try to find now has been google bombed. It's harder and harder to find anything on Google.
I don't know or why people assume that their low tech algorithmn is so great. There's nothing that prevents crass commercial companies from telling their customers or paid cronies to link to them.
I think Google is very overrated and can't handle searches on a variety of topics and I can't believe the media attention that this lone search engine gets when there are others just like it.
Hear Hear, this google worship amazes me. I think I have enjoyed far more free as in beer content from ABC/NBC/CBS than I have from google, yet you would never hear these guys adulated in the same way that google is. Yeah they use linux but so do plenty of other companies, unlike google they don't find it necessary to say aren't we so effin cool, we use linux.
After reading through this article about the fall of the Win32 API, I think Google may be doing something a bit more clever than simply 'giving back'.
The article discusses how the plethora of APIs Microsoft is shipping and uncertainty of just when the APIs will be on real hardware have caused new development to move to the web (for example, building a new email client). It also mentions there are several drawbacks to web programming, but the author expects them to be overcome soon, further sapping the appeal of the Win32 API.
Perhaps this is exactly Google's strategy. How better to further enhance the desireability of web programming versus desktop programming than by demonstraiting in source how to perform some really compelling features? How many developers will take these techniques and use them at the heart of new killer apps; apps that run on any web browser rather than locked to a specific API?
Google may be giving a small bit away, but the potential gains in mindshare among developers may be much, much greater than the loss of this already paid for source code. Further, if the code in question relies on a particular technology, protocol or standard they are well versed in, they have succeeded in enticing developers to play in their sandbox.
Quite clever, really.