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."

Comments

Silicon? Yes. CPUs? Maybe.

[TheRaven64]

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.

Technology Incubator

[Ohreally_factor]

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.

Investing that pile of cash

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Google appear to be investing their pile of cash in a very interesting way: They encourage their engineers to spend 20 percent 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.

Re:This kind of thing that keeps us loving google

[LWATCDR]

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.