Slashdot Mirror
The IT Strategy That Makes Google Work
savio13 writes "InfoWeek published an article on Google's IT Strategy, which can be summarized as: 'Use customized open source where possible, custom build where necessary , and buy if it's not related to something that will give Google a competitive advantage.' The author interviewed several senior IT folks at Google and the article is surprisingly thorough considering how closely Google guards information about their actual IT environment." From the article: "Google managers tend to be reticent on the subject of IT strategy, they're loath to talk about specific vendors or products, and they clam up when asked about their servers and data centers. But a day spent with some of the company's IT leaders reveals there's more to Google's IT operations than a search engine running on a massive server farm. Behind the seeming simplicity is a mash-up of internally developed software, made-to-order hardware, artificial intelligence, obsession with performance, and an unorthodox approach to people management."
"The IT Strategy That Makes Google Work Today"
Everyone's talking about how bloated and old Microsoft is... give Google 10 or 15 years - rest assured we'll be seeing comments like "Where Did Google Go Wrong?" or "Google Delisted" or something like that.
On their patches page, under "Google Search Appliance", there's a note that the linked patches include the kernel information for those machines (e.g. linux-2.4.26-google.tar.gz from their latest GSA distribution. Whether or not the GSA is running the same code as their own search cluster is anyone's guess [aside, of course, from those of you reading this that do work there, heh]. I'd say that they're probably pretty close if they aren't identical because otherwise tracking multiple trees would be kind of a pain in the ass (on the other hand, they do have many developers and an incentive to make their machines scream...). It should be noted that if their search pool servers ARE running changes that aren't being made public, it is perfectly within their rights to do so, as the GPL stipulates (in short) that your customers should have access to your source code (and if you are your only customer, then it's perfectly legit to keep changes in-house; if you start shipping those binaries elsewhere however, then it's time to cough up the src).
News for Geeks in Austin, TX