GOOGLE-MART

Source: Robert Cringely

[Via Rajesh] Pretty interesting article. I was really stunned by the vision and innovation of google. The article opens with very strong and inspiring words: "Play to your strengths. That's the key to success in any industry".

Google's strengths are searching, development of Open Source Internet services, and running clusters of tens of thousands of servers. He also makes a note on why google wont enter the ISP business for sure. "Because ISPs are lousy businesses and building one as anything more than an experiment (as they are doing in San Francisco with wireless) would only hurt Google's earnings"

So why buy-up all that fiber, then?

The probable answer lies in one of Google's underground parking garages in Mountain View. There, in a secret area off-limits even to regular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn't just any shipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data center. Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We're talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid.

And remember the Google Web Accelerator that came and disappeared? It's back! Only this time the Web Accelerator will have the proper hardware and network infrastructure to make it worth using.

Google has the reach and the resources to make this work. There are only so many fiber networks and they'll be BUYING service from those outfits -- many of which are in or near bankruptcy. Say the containers cost $500,000 each in volume and $500,000 per year to run. That's $300 million to essentially co-opt the Internet.

Microsoft can't compete. Yahoo probably can't compete. Sun and IBM are like remora, along for the ride. And what does it all cost, maybe $1 billion? That's less than Microsoft spends on legal settlements each year.

My views: Amazing article, it proves Google's worth and its hope and vision towards building and dominating the internet.Internet is the place where Microsoft really lags behind. I think google would surpass the fame of Java which has been dominating the Internet. The most important and interesting thing I like about google is they dont take sides Neither open source or Microsoft. A very planned move. Thanks to Rajesh for pointing out this article.

Category:Google