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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."
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.
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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.
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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.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Bullshit. Customers come first only if they bring in profits. Non-profiting customers are not worth being in the business for.
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No-one runs a company to provide free meals. That is what the tax slurping, revenue leaking government of the US of A is for
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.
Stop the brainwash
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
- There's no place like 127.0.0.1
I would never consider buying a pre assembled computer for myself. But on the converse I would never under any circumstances advise my customers to build there own hardware. The nightmare that is part end of life, driver hell and the general supply issues involved is not worth it for the majority of businesses. Google assembles thousands upon thousands of servers every year. Even the government department I consult to only does around 5000 servers a year. For the cost of pre assembled blades and servers nowadays there is simply no cost saving in building them yourself unless you are doing in the 10's of thousand.
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.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.)
No, the biggest question is, "Will it run microsoft software transparently?"
If I could pop Ubuntu onto my workstations and leverage my existing five-figure investment in MS-only software (hey, I'm only a three person shop), I'd seriously consider taking the plunge. WGA scares the shit out of me, and I'm fully legal from top to bottom. Two to three days of downtime on just one of my machines at the wrong time could cost me my paycheck for the month, and a lost client or two. I bristle at the possibility that I could be forced to pay for a $300 XPpro license just to keep my shop open if WGA makes a mistake - but given the choice between $300 and $3000 in lost revenue to sort the problem out and get reauthorized, you can bet I'll end up grabbing my ankles for Bill and Co. Sad, but true. Prevent that scenario, and I'd be a happy camper.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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...
That's the traditional model. TFA talks about Google needing to get away from some of their search-business habits for their new ventures, like online payment processing and the like. Redundant persistence, logging, failover protection, etc. is a huge issue any time your database works with information that represents some kind of monetary value. It could be manipulating auction bids, virtual property like Second Life or WoW, or actual money, but there are grave legal dangers if there is something in dispute worth suing over, and your database isn't properly atomic & serializable.
The 'database card' concept could be good, using (e.g.) SRAM (or at least a separate DRAM bank) to hold transaction logs while they execute before writing a checkpoint to the logs on disk. If the power / host machine / etc fails, then a protective circuit with a small battery could write the working log and active queries to Flash memory to ensure they won't be lost. That's a problem that you simply can't solve as well without specialized hardware, or sacrificing a great deal of performance.
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
Okay, you agree that Google is a good company, but now you are going to tell us some ways in which Google is bad, so that overall Google is not as good as we may think. I'm listening.
So, they profit a lot from ads. I was expecting something bad. Is there something inherently bad about ads? I find ads in general to be obtrusive and annoying, but Google's ads are not. Is it more an ideological stance against ads? (I'm assuming that the thing that's bad is the ads, not the making a ton of money.)
That comparison is so off-base! You're comparing apples to religious denominations. "Closed source" and "open source" would apply if they were distributing the software (as in "Microsoft Office and Windows"), but Google isn't distributing their search engine. You're using the negative connotations of "closed source" to create a misleading impression.
You might as well be saying, "John hasn't worked a single day in his life, pays no taxes, and yet lives in daily comfort getting thousands of dollars in government spending." "Really? Who's John?" "My twelve-year-old cousin."
(And don't call me baby cakes.)
Wrong.
See? I, too, can make one-word dogmatic pronouncements. The morality of Google's actions in China are hotly debated here on Slashdot and elsewhere. Since you don't bother to qualify your one-word non-sentence, I won't qualify mine.
Here again, you imply, without explanation something inherently bad about the situation. So what if we are not their customers?
I think of Google as a broker: they profit by connecting us to what we need. Just as a real estate agent connects you to the sellers of your dream home (hey, you the buyer are not the real estate agent's customer!) or a headhunter connects you to that job you've been looking for, so Google connects us to the information we need. This is one connection, but they don't directly profit from it. The other connection is that they connect their advertisers to us. They do profit from this.
It sounds like you are opposed to them "harvest[ing] us and sell[ing] us to their advertisers", but Google only profits when you follow their offered links. You have a choice about whether to use Google as a search engine, and even when you do, you have a choice about whether to follow their offered links.
It's like you're saying, "Damn, I asked the real estate agent to find me a decent house, and she did! I mean, those agents just harvest us house buyers and sell them en masse to the sellers! Damn those real estate agents for doing what we ask!"
I agree that Google is not perfect, but nowhere in your posting do you say why you think so.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]