Slashdot Mirror
Google's Head of Research — We Don't Do Hardware
mr_sifter writes "In a recent, wide-ranging interview Google's Head of Research, Dr Peter Norvig, revealed the firm has no interest in developing its own hardware. (Except a phone, apparently.) Said Norvig, 'We want to work everywhere and be neutral. That neutrality is important.' Interestingly, Norvig is tough on where the company's priorities are at the moment, saying: 'I think there could be much better tools, we're [Google] still kind of isolated in what we do. You give us a question and we give you an answer ... We're really focused on either the five second-type question ... We don't really support the five month or the five year queries, the project or life-long goal.' He also talks about the importance of adding a narrative to search, mobile technology, and how Google's strong financials mean the company can run research in an unusual way."
My Google Search Appliance just disappeared in a poof of smoke and logic!
...or "do" as in "copulate with". Because if it's the later, I'm glad to hear they aren't going the route of Microsoft developers. ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I remember when Microsoft was all "We don't do hardware"...
**looks at his co-workers X-box, microsoft mouse and microsoft joystick**
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
this is news, how?... taco bell doesn't do fried chicken, and I don't do windows.
Define hardware : major items of military weaponry (as tanks or missile)
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
The Google Mini offers the simplicity and power of Google's enterprise search technology at a great price. An integrated hardware and software solution, the Mini offers true plug-and-play installation and can be purchased online. Whether you're looking to search your company's internal information or your public website, the Mini has the features for your business.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Dell
My Sysadmin Blog
"can i have your job?"
seriously, do i not speak for the slashdot community when, considering this guy's resources and job description and everything else, i find my mind consumed with one concept?:
E-N-V-Y
does this guy not have the perfect slashdotter's job or what?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Some OEM partner. Google just makes the software that runs on it.
So who will supply the wireless hardware for the frequencies you are bidding on?
Where on that page do you see anything that would cause you to believe they make the hardware?
I work for a company that sells an appliance, and that company definitely does not 'make' the hardware. Generally, when a company decides to release a product as an appliance (a server/router/etc in a 1U form factor) they contact a company that specializes in 'making' the hardware and give them a list of specifications. You say 'It needs XXX CPU, XXX RAM, a flash drive, blah blah blah, then paint it yellow'. Other than that, the company selling the appliance has nothing to do with making the hardware.
The same thing goes with the Google phone. Google never mentioned anywhere that they were building the phone. They probably write the software, but you can bet that there's a 3rd party firm overseas that did the actual design and implementation of the phone hardware.
Selling hardware and making hardware are two different things, but don't confuse them.
The Dr forgot to mention it's easier for cars to run over pedestrians and for wheelchairs to get stuck in transport grills like this guy.
"People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware."
--Alan Kay
Just look at the job postings:
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/egr/408676278.html
Way to live up to your name.
... you can be certain that something is coming.
It's like your boss walking around saying "there is no truth to the rumors that a layoff is coming." Or your wife saying "there's no need to do anything special for our anniversary."
Or at least the biggest commercial installation ever.
I'd be curious to know what kind of hardware is out
there installed by governments which is not disclosed.
This quote explains much about Google's consistently unfocused progress with many applications remaining incompletely integrated with the others and often incomplete or in endless 'beta'. If I were an investor in GOOG, I'd be even more nervous now than before.
I'm not sure it would be worth Google's time and money to create the
infrastructure necessary to start producing chips for themselves. Why
not just give a requirement list to some already established
manufacturer? I'm sure they'd be happy to have a guaranteed massive
contract for years to come.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
Maybe google has no official hardware initiative to share with analysts, who are focused on money-making ventures. But google's researchers apparently have the freedom to dabble in computer hardware quite a bit...
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/26/2039213
That's good, I was worried for a second that they did, hope they don't keep sheep around as backup.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
I can't begin to describe the extent to which glorification of Google demonstrates the American attitude toward life in general.
Has anyone ever stopped to realize that Google have actually produced nothing technically interesting since a mediocre research thesis (and I mean mediocre by standards of computer science / mathematics, not by layman's standards)? They are (and we'll concentrate here on what makes them most money) an ad space vendor providing eyeballs through a search engine. Writing a search engine is an undergraduate problem. Obtaining sufficient hardware to index and run queries for the majority of the Internet is not, but this is a business problem, not a technical problem.
They are today what Microsoft was in the early '80s. And Microsoft today is the baddie that IBM was in the '80s. Microsoft took a half-assed conception of a single user operating system, Google took a half-assed conception of Internet search, they both tweaked it slightly, lucking upoon the right backers at the right time; 5 years later, they dominate a relatively young field. Have they demonstrated technical competence? Not really. Does anyone here argue that Windows dominates on the desktop today because it is the technically superior system? Of course not!
FWIW I'm a researcher in mathematics, I've worked with a couple of people who have been employed at Google, and while I'd consider them my equal in intellectual terms, they do have a property not shared by my other colleagues - hubris. It's the difference between someone who gives you an excellent solution and then asks, "What do you think?" and someone who gives you an excellent solution and then announces, "Here's how it should be." The latter confidence seems greatly admired in business, and acts as a magnet to the sort of person who would become an Apple or a Google fanboy.
Attack of the brain-eating Google zombies, film at 11
technical writing / development
So much for "Do No Evil"...
Google are designing their own ASICs to build their own ethernet switches. All just to save money they would otherwise be sending to Cisco.
They said they won't do email, chat, financial information, spreadsheets or horoscopes (making fun of Yahoo and Microsoft).
And short of horoscopes, they now do all of this.
(posting anonymously for obvious reasons)
When circling around G building 47 the other day I noticed an oscilloscope near one of the windows in the ground floor.
Ok, this could be a million things, but it got me wondering...
I don't see any reason why Google would want to make hardware.
Because, really, right now, what innovations are needed in hardware? And how would google's philosophy and past experience relate to inventing or perfecting some hardware that would really reach out and grab people?
Not that the x86 architecture is perfect, of course it has lots of flaws, but it seems to be pretty well thought out and tested, and conceptually sound. So what reason is there for going into the hardware market?
I mean, unless google can put a photonic computer that weighs 6 ounces and runs on solar energy on everyone's desktop...which knowing them, might actually be there master plan.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
When I worked for this shower of shits, one of the prime examples to give to potential customers as to why you shouldn't use Google's search facility is that it came in a sealed box, and any failures would result in it having to be sent back to the company. Mind you Autonomy would sell its own mother down the swannee for a belly full of ruin. The ****s !
My web domain.
http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/topic.py?loc_id=1116&dep_id=1093
While C or assembly give you great performance, there are days when what you really need is VHDL or Verilog ;-)
There _was_ a search engine that employed custom built hardware. I remember I used it back in 96 or such.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Saying MS makes good hardware because your optical mouse doesn't need wear out the way wheel mice did is kinda bizarre. I buy the absolute cheapest optical mice I can find and I've yet to have any problems with any of them after years of use and constant dropping on the tile floor. So, this looks like all optical mice are durable, not just MS optical mice.
The title is misleading (of course). A quick glance at Google's jobs site clearly shows they have an entire Hardware category they're hiring for. Google is very interested in making hardware, but for internal consumption. All their servers, their racks, their power, everything in the data center is custom designed for/by them. I've even heard rumors that they're working on custom NICs and switches. Of course there's also the google search appliance.
The point of the question was end-user; talking about the iPhone and PCs. Now we'll see if the gPhone happens and controdicts his answer, but he's saying they don't want to make the device that gives you google's services.
It's ironic you should say that. We had two drives fail our our last GSA. After the first red light, they told us to wait. A couple days later we got our second and lost our search ability for a few days (falling back to good ol' Microsoft Index Server).
A few days ago, we started getting weird search results and you couldn't get to the admin console. After talking to the folks in operations, it turns out we had an endless list of file errors scrolling away on the screen. Now Google tech support is poking around while we wait for something to happen. My guess is that we have a controller failure or something similar.
In any case, I wondered if the "We don't to hardware" comment was an honest self-assessment of their ability to put together a stable piece of equipment.
I think you don't value Google's contribution to internet search fairly. If you just focus on CS and mathematics, you're just not being fair, IMO.
But still: yes, Google is immensely overvalued. They have exceedingly few lines of business that are actually profitable (selling ad space, the search appliance), specially considering all the stuff that they have developed that has fizzled and/or produced relatively little income. Yet despite this, people all over expect them as a matter of course to deliver revolutionary innovations in fields that they have absolutely no track record on.
Are you adequate?
(nt)
Judging from the difficulties one of my co-workers has had (and is still having) getting one configured as per the client's requirements, I'd say they're made by the Devil.
That, or he's a Muppet; the jury's still out to be honest.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
In summary, it is the norm that many people working at google before that used to do a lot of relevant work in their particular area, but once moved into google, they just become programmer #10456.
The original poster misunderstood what transpired in that interview. The journalist asked "access to you is mediated through other technologies. Is there any research ambition towards hardware?" Peter replied: "I don't think so. You know we want to work everywhere and be neutral. That neutrality is important." The journalist herself admitted that it's not very clear: "This agreeable but inscrutable response ..."
It meant that we have no intention to bind users to hardware that works only with Google. Generalizing it to "Google doesn't do hardware research" is a little hasty.
Other than the Google Search Appliance, we also develop the hardware used in our server farms. We have a group called "Platforms", whose tasks include:
- Hardware design: server motherboard, memory module.
- Quality assurance, compliance, component qualification.
- Firmware: BIOS, embedded controllers.
- Networking gear: switches, routers, soft/firmware running on top of them.
- Power engineering: power supply and large-scale power systems.
- Mechanical engineering: chassis, thermal.
- OS: kernel patches, system monitoring and diagnosis.
- Compilers and programming tools.
- Performance: library and (distributed) application profiling and optimization.
- Manufacturing: supply chain, machine build, repair and inventory.
- Project and program management.
- Last but not least: green power.
We have a significant staff in this Platforms group. If you are an expert in any of these areas, you are welcome to apply for a job with us. Look for openings listed under http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/index.html and use "platforms" (don't forget the 's') to search for the Platforms-specific ones.Saw this one coming, they are already becoming completely out of touch with solving a problem and more into showing us old solutions in a new wrapper looking for problems. This is classic big company arrogance, and seeing them fall victim to this virus is wonderful. Search for something on Google lately and notice the plethora of commercial sites that come back as "hits" masked in obfuscated justification as to why they are relevant. Google does not have a crystal ball, and I personally don't want them laying out a road map for me even if the could design future products without evolving (they cant). The world/the web/internet is not a hand maiden to Google and its proprietary vision of interoperability. Personally I think its wonderful they are showing this weakness, perhaps its the ghosts of some of the people they and yahoo have handed over to governments that are cursing this Minitrue scourge that we so sheepishly suck from the foul teat of for tainted for profit information.
> We don't really support the five month or the five year queries, the project or life-long goal.
Looks like I may have to find a new mail provider then.