Google: Still tinkering in the garage

Iria · Jul 3, 2006, 11:15 PM

Source: IHT
___________
When Google was a graduate-school project being run from a Silicon Valley garage, its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, built their own computers out of cheap parts meant for personal computers. They wanted to save money, and they felt that they could design a network that would search the Web more efficiently than those available from traditional manufacturers.

Google no longer needs to pinch pennies. It is one of the world's 500 biggest companies, according to Fortune magazine, with $9 billion in cash. Still, it is sticking to its do-it-yourself approach to technology. Even as it spends more than $1.5 billion this year on operations centers and technology, most of the hundreds of thousands of servers it will deploy are being custom-made from Google's eccentric designs.

To be closer to its users and speed up response time, it is building a worldwide string of data centers, including a huge site in The Dalles, Oregon, with technologies it designed to reduce its ravenous need for electricity. These computers in turn use software developed with advanced tools that Google also designed. There are signs that Google is even preparing to create its own custom microchips.

Jul 3, 2006, 11:15 PM	#1
Iria DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 7,275 Rep Power: 87	Google: Still tinkering in the garage Source: IHT ___________ When Google was a graduate-school project being run from a Silicon Valley garage, its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, built their own computers out of cheap parts meant for personal computers. They wanted to save money, and they felt that they could design a network that would search the Web more efficiently than those available from traditional manufacturers. Google no longer needs to pinch pennies. It is one of the world's 500 biggest companies, according to Fortune magazine, with $9 billion in cash. Still, it is sticking to its do-it-yourself approach to technology. Even as it spends more than $1.5 billion this year on operations centers and technology, most of the hundreds of thousands of servers it will deploy are being custom-made from Google's eccentric designs. To be closer to its users and speed up response time, it is building a worldwide string of data centers, including a huge site in The Dalles, Oregon, with technologies it designed to reduce its ravenous need for electricity. These computers in turn use software developed with advanced tools that Google also designed. There are signs that Google is even preparing to create its own custom microchips.