Google Forms Partnership With NASA

jangobongo writes "Google said on Wednesday that it plans to partner with NASA on space research projects. The new partnership will involve R&D on biotechnology, information technology and nanotechnology, as well as supercomputing. The news article notes some of the mutual benefits: "Google stands to gain from learning about NASA's supercomputers, which could come in handy as the Mountain View search engine compiles even bigger indexes of information and video. NASA leaders cited the benefits of getting access to Google's search expertise to pick out nuggets of information from the volumes of data streaming back from satellites and human space launches."" This story might seem familiar to you. Consider it a public service: if I didn't screw up occasionally, a lot of angry readers would have no other way to vent their rage in a safe environment.

Comments

Is it possible to mod down dupe complainers?

[yog]

I guess it's handy to know that a story is redundant, but when most of the ensuing discussion is focussed on that point, it gets kind of boring, not to mention that the postings are themselves dupes of each other. I wish that the user options provided a way to hide such postings so that those of us interested in the story can discuss it. Although, I do tend to browse at -1 since some decent comments do get modded down by ignorant moderators.

I think it's really cool that NASA is partnering with Google; there seems to be some real synergy there. Someone at Google or at NASA is thinking creatively. NASA has data, and Google has data-processing technologies. Makes sense.

I disagree with the guy who thinks Google should share the partnership with Yahoo and Microsoft. Think of the complexities that would be involved in such a 4-way collaboration, with the three competitors jockeying for a dominant role while publicly acting like friendly partners, while secretly trying to steal each other's technologies, and so forth. No, Google is the premier search engine in the world; no one else comes close, and it seems unlikely that MS/Yahoo will become household search terms any time soon. "Let's just MSN that recipe when we get home!" "Did you yahoo this or did you write yourself?" No I don't think so somehow.

It would be interesting to see if NASA opens up its space probe data streams to Google searches in the future. Perhaps this will spawn a whole new cottage industry of weekend warriors who try to interpret the gigabytes of information streaming back from Mars probes and the like.