Inside the Googleplex

Source: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9719610
Date: Aug 30th 2007

Vocabulary

1. Mainstream: the principal or dominant course, tendency, or trend.


2. Hammock: a hanging bed or couch made of canvas, netted cord, or the like, with cords attached to supports at each end.



3. Fumbling: The act or an instance of fumbling.



4. Computer worksheet: a type of software for microcomputers that offers the user a visual display of a simulated worksheet and the means of using it for financial plans, budgets, etc.



5. Wary: watchful; being on one's guard against danger.



6. Wince: to draw back or tense the body, as from pain or from a blow; start; flinch.



7. Livelihood: a means of supporting one's existence, esp. financially or vocationally; living.



8. Incubent: obligatory.



9. Sauce: any preparation, usually liquid or semiliquid, eaten as a gravy or as a relish accompanying food.



10. Negligible: so small, trifling, or unimportant that it may safely be neglected or disregarded.



11. Kudo: honor; glory; acclaim.


12. Dystopia: a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding.


13. Rogue: a dishonest, knavish person; scoundrel.


14. Trade off: an exchange of one thing in return for another, especially relinquishment of one benefit or advantage for another regarded as more desirable.
15. Log: any of various chronological records made concerning the use of a computer system, the changes made to data, etc.

Summary

This article is about the way in which Google has increased the amount of users all over the world. And what is surprising is that it is all for free. Google evokes ambivalent feelings. Some users now keep their photos, blogs, videos, calendars, e-mail, news feeds, maps, contacts, social networks, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and credit-card information—in short, much of their lives—on Google's computers. And Google has plans to add medical records, location-aware services and much else. It may even buy radio spectrum in America so that it can offer all these services over wireless-internet connections.

Google's success still comes from one main source: the small text ads placed next to its search results and on other web pages. The advertisers pay only when consumers click on those ads.

The machinery that represents the fixed costs is Google's secret sauce. Google has built, in effect, the world's largest supercomputer. It consists of vast clusters of servers, spread out in enormous datacentres around the world. The details are Google's best-guarded secret. But the result, explains Bill Coughran, a top engineer at Google, is to provide a “cloud” of computing power that is flexible enough “automatically to move load around between datacentres”. If, for example, there is unexpected demand for Gmail, Google's e-mail service, the system instantly allocates more processors and storage to it, without the need for human intervention.

But the privacy problem is much subtler. As Google compiles more information about individuals, it faces numerous trade-offs. At one extreme it could use a person's search history and advertising responses in combination with, say, his location and the itinerary in his calendar, to serve increasingly useful and welcome search results and ads. This would also allow Google to make money from its many new services. But it could scare users away. As a warning, Privacy International, a human-rights watchdog in London, has berated Google, charging that its attitude to privacy “at its most blatant is hostile, and at its most benign is ambivalent”.

Personal Reaction

I beleive that google is an unending source of information. And that we all take advantage of this. But when it gets to the extreme of going into the personal life of people it becomes something to pay attention to.

All in all, there is a lot to be said about this because technology is in constant growth. The need to be comunicated increases and computers are here to stay.