Another Times piece on the Google phenomenon, with some interesting facts. Paul rounds them up.
The focus of the piece is on how Google has made infrastructure a core competence, to the point of designing and building servers and related software. This is not news to readers of Searchblog, but there are interesting contours to the story, including a response 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:
“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.”
Google clearly believes that its infrastructure will prove a lasting competitive advantage, and the piece hints that Google may even get into microchip design. Hmmm, is Intel paranoid now?