Google's Head of Research — We Don't Do Hardware

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Google's Head of Research — We Don't Do Hardware

Posted by Zonk on Friday September 14, 2007 @05:02AM from the to-the-gmobile dept.

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."

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Of course! by biocute · 2007-09-14 05:14 · Score: 3, Informative

Define hardware : major items of military weaponry (as tanks or missile)

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Re:Google doesn't make hardware? by masdog · 2007-09-14 05:15 · Score: 2, Informative

Dell

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Re:Google doesn't make hardware? by brunes69 · 2007-09-14 05:16 · Score: 5, Informative

Some OEM partner. Google just makes the software that runs on it.
Re:Apart from the cellphone and the Mini... by masdog · 2007-09-14 05:18 · Score: 2, Informative

Google doesn't assemble the hardware for that device...they contract that out to a company in San Jose that does it for them.

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Re:I remember another company once said this... by king-manic · 2007-09-14 05:31 · Score: 2, Informative

Really?

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Re:Google does do hardware by morgan_greywolf · 2007-09-14 05:38 · Score: 3, Informative

Just because Google needs hardware to run its operations, and thus, hardware testing engineers to test new hardware and infrastructures, doesn't mean that they 'do hardware.'

Or were you trying to be funny?

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Re:I remember another company once said this... by WilliamSChips · 2007-09-14 05:50 · Score: 3, Informative

He's talking about their mice and keyboards.

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Re:I remember another company once said this... by Realistic_Dragon · 2007-09-14 06:52 · Score: 2, Informative

Microsoft WIRED Mice and Keyboards are pretty good.

Too true. I have a first gen MS optical intellimouse that has seen 6+ hours of use per day for about 11 years now without failure. Hell the thing is so old that I didn't even dislike Microsoft when I bought it! Fortunately the logo rubbed off around 1999 and these days no one can recognise it.

In fact when it was new my top-end machine was a blistering 400mhz PII with 64mb of ram running Win95. Who the hell knew that that Microsoft could make anything good for 24,000 hours of use with no faults.

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