I'm just opening up this thread to track the evolution of Google... We've sorta done it up 'til now, but it's been dispersed through many threads and it'd be nice to bring it together some. Feel free to post links to old threads as they become relevant again.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/13/ ... search.php
So, Google has even more computing power than I thought @ 450,000 servers up from 100,000 in 2003 and 8,000 in 2001. By comparison, it will take MS 'til 2011 to reach 800,000 servers. Even if Google gets another 450,000 computers in 4 years, that's gonna be 100,000 more than MS and a year sooner. To boot, I'm sure Google's utilizing those computers more efficiently than MS. As this world become more and more based on information processing, who's really gonna be able to compete with them?
(yes yes, I know that not all computers are created equal so sheer number shouldn't matter, but I think it will in this case since it's throughput that will win this war, not really computational speed.)
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quantus
- Tenth Dan Procrastinator
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Exactly. Node management and fault tollerance become huge factors as you continue to grow the system, both of which require a significant software investment. Then throw in the heterogeneous nature of this huge system and you've just multiplied your problems some more. You need to manage all that data as well by keeping it distributed, redundant and close to the areas more likely to use it.