An old science fiction short story goes: An advanced civilization builds the biggest computer in the universe. It houses all information and knowledge.
The computer's inventor says: "Is there a god?
The computer answers: "There is now."
Of course, this is a common theme in science fiction is: computers that gain consciousness and do bad things. Some are classics, like 2001: A Space Odyssey or War Games.
Well, according to a recent piece in the New York Times, Google wants to built the world's biggest, smartest and most efficient computer. Hopefully, they plan to abide by their mantra to do no evil.
Popular wisdom is that Google is just about software. Not really. In fact, if you look at the history of the co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, they spent considerable time building the ultimate computer by using cheap spare parts and reading up – in the Stanford library – on supercomputer research. Some of the co-founders' innovation were brilliant, such as using Velcro to join racks of servers (Google even got a patent on this last year).
Basically, by building its own infrastructure, the founders thought that they would create a powerful competitive advantage. That is, they could control and customize the platform, as well as get economies of scale.
As of now, it is unclear how big the Google computer is. But it involves hundreds of thousands of servers and consumes large amounts of electricity (the rumor is that the company is the biggest purchaser of electricity in California).
In fact, Google's innovation in systems design could mean a new line of business – competing with companies like Hewlett-Packard and Sun. In fact, according to the NY Times article, Google already has a variety of cutting-edge systems products. There is MapReduce, which allows for parallel processing of enormous amounts of data. There is also the Google File System, which keeps copies of data (this is to deal with server failure).
There is even talk that Google is considering building microchips. For example, the company has been hiring former chip engineers who helped build DEC's Alpha chip.
Yes, maybe even Intel should be concerned.
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