主题：【原创】Google In My Eyes (1) -- 林木森森
家园 【原创】Google In My Eyes (1) Google is definitely a king in search market now, it holds triumph. First of all, I would like to show you some data to give you a overall picture:
1. minimum 1,000 queries/sec,
2. 200 million search/day
3. nearly 100,000 servers
4. index 3 billion web pages
5. 4 petabytes disk storage
the sheer volume of data is astonishing, the impact is profound at 21st century information age.
Internet started a revolution, the search would be essential in the future in our society. Here are something about google:
1. its search technology. Here comes some concerns to return quality search result. The size of index, the algorithm to rank relevancy based upon query interpretation, ..etc. The secret ingredient is google’s page rank algorithm here. Actually link analysis isn’t anything break-though, It came from IBM research lab first. To put this computer jargon in plain English it is like popularity contest, if web site has most links from other relevant sites, it would be considered popular. It has its merits I think to some extents. So far, google does pretty decent job in relevancy, but better has come yet. Certainly, a bunch of people are trying hard to hack its algorithm to be on top rank, bogus link farm was one of tactics. On current playground, there are other upstarts which are willing to challenge the crown too, such as teoma, which is pretty impressive to me. Certainly, it is only getting hotter in search market.
2. its infrastructure. Being responsive is always top priority to search business. Google comes its own way. it has been stacking inexpensive servers on the rack, writing software to manage them. At its volume and traffic, there is no out-of-shelf solution, it rolled out its own distributed file system, automation management system, cluster system …etc. Its infrastructure is unbelievable, just imagine dealing with those 100,000+ severs, it would make people dizzy. So, they put in 110% severs in service, if 10% is down, there are still functioning.
3. its culture. It has been pursuing perfection. Its simplicity of user interface is definitely attractive comparing those clustered commercial advertising directory. It does one thing, but does really well. No bull at all. It is serious about what they are doing. It is doing things with its own way, like its IPO process. Certainly, something I feel paranoid with its style, like Gmail, why does it have to select “small group” to start with? Where is fairness in this play? The same comes to their social networking “orkut” baby, why does it start with randomly picked 2,000 people from the world? I guess they just are being different.
本帖一共被 3 帖 引用 (帖内工具实现)家园 Very well done.From the non technical buinsess perspective, I believe Google provides a revolutionary solution to the most serious challenges that the advertising industry has been facing for the past decades: information overloading and decreasing effectiveness of advertising.
By providing users information that is likely relevant to their needs, Google is able to help ordinary consumers to cut through the clutter and may potentially undercut all the other advertising media like TV commercial or print media, if not to replace them.
Look forward to more of your insightful analysis.
家园 Great commentary piece! The only thing is that great company doesn't necessarily mean great stock.
Keep on writing...
家园 thanks, i agree with what you said, how google is going to perform in stock market is still a question. By the way, It would be sad to see google sacrifices its long term growth for quarterly earning report.
- 复 thanks,
家园 i don't think that's a serious concern as the two founders made it crystal clear that they won't bend to wall street analysts in trying to meet with financial forecasts on a quarterly basis. instead, they uphold the long-term view aimed at maximizing shareholders' value in a similar manner that Buffet has insisted for his stakeholders. that said, it's a fierce ongoing battle between the Street and the Valley, as the latter is attempting to marginalize the former’s role on value discovering.
家园 yes, the way they coodinate 100kserver is really amazing,
hope anybody can write some introduction about
google servers' infra structure.
they have their own distributed operating system?
cool..
家园 Yeah, you are right! It is really amazing! I bet they must have some damn cool stuff behind scene.
家园 You made some great points! Please keep going?
BTW, have you bought any share of google?
家园 thanks for being supportive! personally i won't play their stocks in public stock market, their last year revenue was about 900 million to 1 billion, comparing to their market value it is kind of pricy. IMHO, My guess would be that price would go up after IPO because of all the backing and support from major IPO underwriters.