Search Engine Re-Inventing Hardware
While everyone knows about the different Google software features introduced (almost) daily. Not much is known about the technology that runs this monster.
A recent NYT article outlines the different attempts of Google to re-invent hardware, not to compromise with current hardware offerings and work on pushing hardware capability further by creating in-home pieces of hardware.
The article’s main points are:
- Google is among AMD’s five largest clients, and is the largest customer that does not make computers to resell
- Google is giving every sign that it is getting into semiconductor design
- Most of the hundreds of thousands of computers at Google are custom Google designs
- Google is the fourth largest maker of servers in the world, after Dell, HP, and IBM
It also includes comments made by both Yahoo and Microsoft about the current policy. From Yahoo:
“At some point you have to ask yourself what is your core business,” said Kevin Timmons, Yahoo’s vice president for operations. “Are you going to design your own router, or are you going to build the world’s most popular Web site? It is very difficult to do both.”
Google, in fact, has decided it will do both.
And from Microsoft’s Bill Gates:
“Google doesn’t have anything magic here,” Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman, said in an interview. “We spend a little bit more per machine. But to do the same tasks, we have less machines.”
Whether it is the needs of Google, too much excess money, or simply a “we can do it better” attitude, it will be interesting to see where this takes them, and what adventage they will have over their competitors.
[Found via Searchblog]
