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rhinoceros
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What is Google really building?
« on: 2004-04-05 18:20:52 » |
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This is a recent entry from a blog written by Rich Skrenta (http://www.skrenta.com/)
The Secret Source of Google's Power
http://blog.topix.net/archives/000016.html
Much is being written about Gmail, Google's new free webmail system. There's something deeper to learn about Google from this product than the initial reaction to the product features, however. Ignore for a moment the observations about Google leapfrogging their competitors with more user value and a new feature or two. Or Google diversifying away from search into other applications; they've been doing that for a while. Or the privacy red herring.
No, the story is about seemingly incremental features that are actually massively expensive for others to match, and the *platform* that Google is building which makes it cheaper and easier for them to develop and run web-scale applications than anyone else.
<snip>
Google has taken the last 10 years of systems software research out of university labs, and built their own proprietary, production quality system. What is this platform that Google is building? It's a distributed computing platform that can manage web-scale datasets on 100,000 node server clusters. It includes a petabyte, distributed, fault tolerant filesystem, distributed RPC code, probably network shared memory and process migration. And a datacenter management system which lets a handful of ops engineers effectively run 100,000 servers. Any of these projects could be the sole focus of a startup.
<snip>
What are all those OS Researchers doing at Google?
Rob Pike has gone to Google. Yes, that Rob Pike -- the OS researcher, the member of the original Unix team from Bell Labs. This guy isn't just some labs hood ornament; he writes code, lots of it. Big chunks of whole new operating systems like Plan 9.
Look at the depth of the research background of the Google employees in OS, networking, and distributed systems. Compiler Optimization. Thread migration. Distributed shared memory.
I'm a sucker for cool OS research. Browsing papers from Google employees about distributed systems, thread migration, network shared memory, GFS, makes me feel like a kid in Tomorrowland wondering when we're going to Mars. Wouldn't it be great, as an engineer, to have production versions of all this great research.
Google engineers do!
Competitive Advantage
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?
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Walter Watts
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Re: virus: What is Google really building?
« Reply #1 on: 2004-04-05 23:47:02 » |
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There is book I thumbed through at Borders called "Google Hacks".
Looked like a great read. Written by Google insiders.
Walter
rhinoceros wrote:
> This is recent entry from a blog written by Rich Skrent (http://www.skrenta.com/)
>
> The Secret Source of Google's Power
> http://blog.topix.net/archives/000016.html
>
> Much is being written about Gmail, Google's new free webmail system. There's something deeper to learn about Google from this product than the initial reaction to the product features, however. Ignore for a moment the observations about Google leapfrogging their competitors with more user value and a new feature or two. Or Google diversifying away from search into other applications; they've been doing that for a while. Or the privacy red herring.
>
> No, the story is about seemingly incremental features that are actually massively expensive for others to match, and the *platform* that Google is building which makes it cheaper and easier for them to develop and run web-scale applications than anyone else.
>
> <snip>
>
> Google has taken the last 10 years of systems software research out of university labs, and built their own proprietary, production quality system. What is this platform that Google is building? It's a distributed computing platform that can manage web-scale datasets on 100,000 node server clusters. It includes a petabyte, distributed, fault tolerant filesystem, distributed RPC code, probably network shared memory and process migration. And a datacenter management system which lets a handful of ops engineers effectively run 100,000 servers. Any of these projects could be the sole focus of a startup.
>
> <snip>
>
> What are all those OS Researchers doing at Google?
>
> Rob Pike has gone to Google. Yes, that Rob Pike -- the OS researcher, the member of the original Unix team from Bell Labs. This guy isn't just some labs hood ornament; he writes code, lots of it. Big chunks of whole new operating systems like Plan 9.
>
> Look at the depth of the research background of the Google employees in OS, networking, and distributed systems. Compiler Optimization. Thread migration. Distributed shared memory.
>
> I'm a sucker for cool OS research. Browsing papers from Google employees about distributed systems, thread migration, network shared memory, GFS, makes me feel like a kid in Tomorrowland wondering when we're going to Mars. Wouldn't it be great, as an engineer, to have production versions of all this great research.
>
> Google engineers do!
>
> Competitive Advantage
>
> 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?
>
> ----
> This message was posted by rhinoceros to the Virus 2004 board on Church of Virus BBS.
> <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=61;action=display;threadid=30134>
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simul
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Re: virus: What is Google really building?
« Reply #3 on: 2004-04-06 18:05:35 » |
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Very smart.
But they are missing one key component of growth.
Decentralizing network and computing resources is very smart...
Decentralizing brand is even smarter.
It keeps government regulators off your ass.
Google, IMHO, has just become a regulatory target.
They would have been better off selling the right for other companies to develop on their proprietary platform, then trying to swallow the whole internet with one brand name.
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First, read Bruce Sterling's "Distraction", and then read http://electionmethods.org.
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rhinoceros
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Re:What is Google really building?
« Reply #4 on: 2004-04-06 20:25:48 » |
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[simul]
But they are missing one key component of growth.
Decentralizing network and computing resources is very smart...
Decentralizing brand is even smarter.
It keeps government regulators off your ass.
Google, IMHO, has just become a regulatory target.
They would have been better off selling the right for other companies to develop on their proprietary platform, then trying to swallow the whole internet with one brand name.
[rhinoceros]
What strikes me as odd about Google is that by sticking with their ad-free and text-only ads design (not that I complain) they give a definite impression that they are not driven by their marketing department but by their engineers and designers (rather unusual to be true in our cynic days).
I have also noticed that they are not even in NASDAQ while Yahoo is, and that they had been selling their services to Yahoo until recently (Yahoo uses its own engine now). Their recent announcement of Gmail may have been a result of their fall out with Yahoo to some degree. Here are some links I found:
Yahoo and Google: Cold War redux
January 19, 2004: 12:05 PM EST
http://money.cnn.com/2004/01/19/technology/techinvestor/hellweg/
Losing the Yahoo account, Google is no longer the sole superpower in search.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - When Yahoo announced its fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, investors drove down the stock price in part because the results weren't "boffo" enough.
But a small bit of news also released that day should appease the boffomongers for 2004: Yahoo will be dumping Google as its search technology provider sometime in the first quarter.
Yahoo! Birth of a New Machine
February 18, 2004
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3314171
Yahoo is rolling out a brand new search engine today, with its own index and ranking mechanisms, casting aside its long-standing use of Google-powered search results. The move is bound to roil the industry and sets in motion a new race for the claim of web search champion.
Yahoo! Drops Google, Launches New Search Engine
February 20th, 2004, 5:32 AM
http://www.betanews.com/article.php3?sid=1077273127
Yahoo! has ended its marriage of convenience with Google and has begun to field test its own search engine technology in regional markets. The rollout of Yahoo's new engine, built on top of technology acquired from Inktomi, marks an unofficial end to its partnership with Google, which dates back to October 2002.
Search Engine News
http://www.pandia.com/searchworld/
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simul
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Re: virus: Re:What is Google really building?
« Reply #5 on: 2004-04-07 08:42:44 » |
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I agree, it's a company founded by PHD's and engineers, whose CEO's all know how to code. Typically, these guys get bought out or are “sick” of doing “social engineering” by now, and have given over the reigns to a “board” by now.
You know their corporate motto “don't be evil”.
He who has the capacity for the greatest good also has the capacity for the greatest evil.
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First, read Bruce Sterling's "Distraction", and then read http://electionmethods.org.
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rhinoceros
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Re:What is Google really building?
« Reply #6 on: 2004-04-07 15:02:01 » |
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It gets more interesting. What was I saying about how Google was driven by engineering rather than marketing? Here is what happened now:
<begin quote>
Google's Gmail headache grows with trademark claim
Reuters, 04.07.04, 9:20 AM ET
http://www.forbes.com/home_europe/newswire/2004/04/07/rtr1325818.html
LONDON, April 7 (Reuters) - First, it was privacy advocates who vowed to fight Google's proposed e-mail service, Gmail. Now, a small-cap independent investment research firm said it owns the trademark to "Gmail" and it intends to battle to keep it.
<snip>
"When the news came out about Google's Gmail last week, I went to the U.S. patent and trademark authorities. I thought maybe we were in trouble. But they hadn't (registered)," Shane Smith, group chief executive of Market Age, told Reuters on Wednesday.
He said that on Saturday he paid the $700 in fees to register "Gmail" under the company's name. The Market Age never registered a "Gmail" Web domain, he added.
<snip>
Shares in The Market Age more than doubled to a high of 27.5 pence on Tuesday after it mentioned its claim on the "Gmail" trademark. The jump was helped by a "buy note" from an analyst at Corporate Synergy.
Shares fell back again on Wednesday, slumping 16 percent to 20 pence.
<end quote>
[rhinoceros]
The next interesting thing is that when I type www.gmail.com in my browser it takes me to gmail.google.com. So, while "Gmail" is now a registered trademark of Market Age, the "gmail.com" web domain is registered to Google. Go figure. We are probably going to see some legal action or some cash changing hands.
On a remotely related note, I can see that domain-name squatting can make money, providing value to the squatters, but can anyone explain how this can be justified? What value does the squatter offer in return? My closest guess is that it is a result of an abuse of the concept of property which has found its way into the legislation. Any other explanations?
As someone once said (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property),
<begin quote>
It is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all... It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. -- Thomas Jefferson
<end quote>
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Walter Watts
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Re: virus: Re:What is Google really building?
« Reply #7 on: 2004-04-07 16:12:56 » |
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Rhino, here's from an old post I sent a couple of yearly domain-name registrations ago:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you happen to have a domain name or two, DON'T LET THEM LAPSE.
They will be sold into an underground network of domain-name slavery
sweatshops in Malaysia and it will cost you dearly to get them back.
You'd best consider putting your lost domain-name on milk cartons
with a plaintive "Have You Seen This Domain-Name?"
FFFFFFUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKk
Walter
<what a goddamn shakedown--who would want MY domain name, except maybe another Walter Watts---well fuck you, Walter Watts, whoever you are>
----------------------------------------------------------
rhinoceros wrote:
> <snip>
> On a remotely related note, I can see that domain-name squatting can make money, providing value to the squatters, but can anyone explain how this can be justified? What value does the squatter offer in return? My closest guess is that it is a result of an abuse of the concept of property which has found its way into the legislation. Any other explanations?
--
Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
"Pursue the small utopias... nature, music, friendship, love"
--Kupferberg--
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Walter Watts
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Blunderov
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RE: virus: Re:What is Google really building?
« Reply #8 on: 2002-01-02 16:07:00 » |
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rhinoceros
Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 9:02 PM
[rhinoceros]
On a remotely related note, I can see that domain-name squatting can
make money, providing value to the squatters, but can anyone explain how
this can be justified? What value does the squatter offer in return? My
closest guess is that it is a result of an abuse of the concept of
property which has found its way into the legislation. Any other
explanations?
[Blunderov] At the risk of being hideously simplistic, does the value
not derive from simple ownership of a scarce resource? 'Mail' is almost
indispensable in a domain name that intends to deal in e-mail, and there
are only 26 letters in the alphabet.
Is it possible that the very term 'e-mail' has imposed a sort of memetic
template that is obeyed subconsciously? Or are there more technical
reasons for the form (n)mail?
Anyway, taking all this into consideration along with 'money' and
'information' suggests to me that there is might be a class of abstract
objects that, in spite of their abstractness, are dealt with as if they
were in fact concrete. A hybrid meme?
Any takers?
Best Regards
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Walter Watts
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RE: virus: Re:What is Google really building?
« Reply #9 on: 2004-04-07 19:03:27 » |
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Yeah, but you have to set your clock right before I'll answer. 
Walter
[Blunderov]
Any takers?
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: virus: Re:What is Google really building?
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 23:07:00 +0200
From: "Blunderov" <squooker@mweb.co.za>
Reply-To: virus@lucifer.com
To: <virus@lucifer.com>
[Blunderov] At the risk of being hideously simplistic, does the value
not derive from simple ownership of a scarce resource? 'Mail' is almost
indispensable in a domain name that intends to deal in e-mail, and there
are only 26 letters in the alphabet.
Is it possible that the very term 'e-mail' has imposed a sort of memetic
template that is obeyed subconsciously? Or are there more technical
reasons for the form (n)mail?
Anyway, taking all this into consideration along with 'money' and
'information' suggests to me that there is might be a class of abstract
objects that, in spite of their abstractness, are dealt with as if they
were in fact concrete. A hybrid meme?
Any takers?
Best Regards
---
To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to
<http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
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Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!
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rhinoceros
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Re:What is Google really building?
« Reply #10 on: 2004-04-07 21:01:53 » |
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[rhinoceros] On a remotely related note, I can see that domain-name squatting can make money, providing value to the squatters, but can anyone explain how this can be justified? What value does the squatter offer in return? My closest guess is that it is a result of an abuse of the concept of property which has found its way into the legislation. Any other explanations?
[Blunderov] At the risk of being hideously simplistic, does the value not derive from simple ownership of a scarce resource? 'Mail' is almost indispensable in a domain name that intends to deal in e-mail, and there are only 26 letters in the alphabet.
[rhinoceros]
It is still puzzling... Apparently "moogle.com" or "noogle.com" don't have any special value now, for all their scarcity, but that didn't stop the squatters from sitting on them (you can check), just in case Google decides that these names are good for something. If that happens, the value will jump up, not because Google took the (previously useless) idea for the names from them, but because the law allows them to register the names like any other property. In this scenario, a value was produced while the scarcity of the name did not really change. Granted, it was the law of demand and offer which came into play, but I still can't see where value was produced.
Here's another magic picture. We are in the wild west. Some people ride around and plant sign-posts and register land which they are not going to use, expecting that the ones who will want to use it will pay. Society has no reason to repect this (this was my point when I posted the Jefferson quote about how the right to permanent property is granted by society), because what these people did doesn't seem to have any value. Remember that peasants have done revolutions (yes, the ones with those big forks) for much lesser causes.
(x)mail.com is a bit different. It has already some special value, because of the ease of association with the word "e-mail" by the user -- i guess the memetic template you mentioned is the ease of recalling what to type. It is somehow more difficult to do the same analysis here... One can bitch if the owner doesn't use the domain, but the potential exists.
Registrar sites such as daddy.com make business out of this. People pay a fee and godaddy grabs sites for them the very moment their registrations expires. That's what happened to WW and Sat.
Heh... and I won't get into the concrete vs abstract thing. I do buy abstract items all the time. Or concrete items containing abstract items. Or abstract items containing concrete items.
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simul
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Re: virus: Re:What is Google really building?
« Reply #11 on: 2004-04-08 12:42:30 » |
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Announcing a new product without doing a trademark search was irresponsible at best.
-----Original Message-----
From: "rhinoceros" <rhinoceros@freemail.gr>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2004 19:01:53
To:virus@lucifer.com
Subject: virus: Re:What is Google really building?
[rhinoceros] On a remotely related note, I can see that domain-name squatting can make money, providing value to the squatters, but can anyone explain how this can be justified? What value does the squatter offer in return? My closest guess is that it is a result of an abuse of the concept of property which has found its way into the legislation. Any other explanations?
[Blunderov] At the risk of being hideously simplistic, does the value not derive from simple ownership of a scarce resource? 'Mail' is almost indispensable in a domain name that intends to deal in e-mail, and there are only 26 letters in the alphabet.
[rhinoceros]
It is still puzzling... Apparently "moogle.com" or "noogle.com" don't have any special value now, for all their scarcity, but that didn't stop the squatters from sitting on them (you can check), just in case Google decides that these names are good for something. If that happens, the value will jump up, not because Google took the (previously useless) idea for the names from them, but because the law allows them to register the names like any other property. In this scenario, a value was produced while the scarcity of the name did not really change. Granted, it was the law of demand and offer which came into play, but I still can't see where value was produced.
Here's another magic picture. We are in the wild west. Some people ride around and plant sign-posts and register land which they are not going to use, expecting that the ones who will want to use it will pay. Society has no reason to repect this (this was my point when I posted the Jefferson quote about how the right to permanent property is granted by society), because what these people did doesn't seem to have any value. Remember that peasants have done revolutions (yes, the ones with those big forks) for much lesser causes.
(x)mail.com is a bit different. It has already some special value, because of the ease of association with the word "e-mail" by the user -- i guess the memetic template you mentioned is the ease of recalling what to type. It is somehow more difficult to do the same analysis here... One can bitch if the owner doesn't use the domain, but the potential exists.
Registrar sites such as daddy.com make business out of this. People pay a fee and godaddy grabs sites for them the very moment their registrations expires. That's what happened to WW and Sat.
Heh... and I won't get into the concrete vs abstract thing. I do buy abstract items all the time. Or concrete items containing abstract items. Or abstract items containing concrete items.
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First, read Bruce Sterling's "Distraction", and then read http://electionmethods.org.
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