Some very smart thinking in here about how Google is a massively distributed platform with its own OS, and how that has given Google the competitive edge to roll out cool stuff like Gmail. Very Web 2.0 stuff here – the Platform Web.
Google is a company that has built a single very large, custom computer. It’s running their own cluster operating system. They make their big computer even bigger and faster each month, while lowering the cost of CPU cycles. It’s looking more like a general purpose platform than a cluster optimized for a single application.
While competitors are targeting the individual applications Google has deployed, Google is building a massive, general purpose computing platform for web-scale programming.
This computer is running the world’s top search engine, a social networking service, a shopping price comparison engine, a new email service, and a local search/yellow pages engine. What will they do next with the world’s biggest computer and most advanced operating system?
PS – read the comments in my Gmail post. Seems some Gmail beta testers are hanging out there…
PPS – Gmail is reviewed here by a beta tester…thanks Eric…
This is a very interesting take on the way the Google Machine works. Some of the points seem a bit far-fetched, but the whole piece allows one to create a nice visual of the company’s internals.
Watson’s Law:
Any technology which is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from a mainframe.
Interesting that Google would be inconceivable on Microsoft (Orkut notwhithstanding).
I’d like to get the source on this one. Not sure what to think until I know where this info came from. Yes, they have good processing power and deploy more new apps than their competitors and get more free publicity via blogs and newswires than any company in history but I don’t know about their own O.S.
Any references would be appreciated.