Sam Walton Taught Google More About How to Dominate the Internet Than Microsoft Ever Did

[Jason Dunn]

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/...it20051117.html

"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."

Another thought-provoking article from Robert X. Cringely. Will it come to pass? Who knows - but what I do know is that despite all of Microsoft's best efforts, they're always several steps behind Google when it comes to Web-based applications and services.

[Jason Dunn]

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/...it20051117.html

"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."

Another thought-provoking article from Robert X. Cringely. Will it come to pass? Who knows - but what I do know is that despite all of Microsoft's best efforts, they're always several steps behind Google when it comes to Web-based applications and services.

[Clinton Fitch]

Interesting article...

Someone said in an email to me this week that Google is the Matrix. I'm starting to believe it.

Regards,

[galt]

Originally Posted by Jason Dunn

...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.

I'm not sure Google is so far ahead of Microsoft on this one. 20-40 foot box crammed full of CPUs and stuff? That sounds a lot like an Xbox 360! :lol:

Sorry, I know the "xbox is huge" jokes are so 3 years ago, but I just couldn't resist...

[Jonathan1]

Makes perfect sense. If you are going to start offering up more bandwidth intensive content (Google Earth, Google Video, etc.) you need a pretty good pipe. P2P has shown that distributed content downloads are a very viable way of doing things as long as most of the senders have a nice phat pipe to play with. Google is probably doing this. They are preping an infrastructure for future apps.

[ricksfiona]

One word: WOW :werenotworthy:

[Typhoon]

Isn't it "petrabytes"? I could be wrong...

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by Typhoon

Isn't it "petrabytes"? I could be wrong...

Petabyte is correct:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petabyte

Petra is something else entirely. ;-)