Behind the Scenes At Google

An anonymous reader writes "University of Wahington TV Presents "behind the Scenes With Google." From the site: 'Search is one of the most important applications used on the internet and poses some of the most interesting challenges in computer science. Providing high-quality search requires understanding across a wide range of computer science disciplines. In this program, Jeff Dean of Google describes some of these challenges, discusses applications Google has developed, and highlights systems they've built, including GFS, a large-scale distributed file system, and MapReduce, a library for automatic parallelization and distribution of large-scale computation. He also shares some interesting observations derived from Google's web data.' "

Fsking video format.

[Anonymous Coward]

I fsking hate proprietary video formats. Even worse than other formats!

G4/TechTV

[totallygeek]

I wish that the technology channel actually had programs on technology like this. This could also work on Modern Marvels on History Channel. It would also work nicely on Discovery or PBS. It is time for television programming to amaze me again!

GFS

[woah]

I've never realised that GFS was developed by Google. I've come to know about it because I was building an OpenMosix cluster. At the time OpenMosix had their own distributed filesystem called MFS. But it's proved inadequate, which is why they are switching to GFS

It's quite nice to see a large corporation make a contribution to Open Source, especially in such a "R&D-esque" field as supercomputing.

Who said that Open Source only rehashes existing technologies and never does anything new?

Re:Google & Backup

[Seumas]

Um... the data is replicated across multiple machines in the datacenter and then again across multiple datacenters, of which they have many globally. Not really a need to backup that data. I'm sure the gmail stuff is done in a similar way.

Re:Fsking video format.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain how these programs provide patent-free, Open Source, non-crappy video codecs.

Re:want real dirt? go to www.fuckedgoogle.com

[LegionX]

This page strikes me as dumb and deliberately one sided.. and surprise: nothing everyone hasn't heard before! (except for the cheesy bad humour). Everyone their taste, but show me some real dirt please.

Re:I use Google at work

[TheLink]

a) Don't use Google.
b) Use a different anonymizing proxy for _each_ single search, preferably using SSL.
c) Assume your searches AND non-encrypted web requests aren't anonymous and secure.

If I were running the NSA or some other spook agency, I'd tap the pipes leading to Google (and a few other sites too).

Same if I were a dubious org/agency.

Lots of finance institutions/orgs/ppl get the bulk of their info from just a few sources e.g. Bloomberg. So if Bloomberg gets/sends the bulk of their info down just a few pipes... ;)

Dirt? That more like modelling clay

[TheLink]

Given the bias of the site if that's all the dirt they can dig up, Google must be a pretty good company, and/or the people at that site are just crap at digging up dirt.

Think about it, if someone really hated any of the Fortune 500 companies and bothered to dig up some dirt, there'd be tons more dirt.

I suppose Google is a young company. Give it a few more years and more parasites would have found their way into Google. Then you'd have a lot more dirt.

Re:Fsking video format.

[RetroGeek]

Sigh, an article about google and you cannot do a simple google search [google.ca].

Re:want real dirt? go to www.fuckedgoogle.com

[drsquare]

This page strikes me as dumb and deliberately one sided..

Just like Slashdot then? Except this fuckedgoogle site has the opposite viewpoint. How is it OK to be biased in one direction, but not the other? Why is it that some people on this site seem to have a vested interest in quashing any criticism of their favourite giant corporation? What have you got to hide?

Re:mediocre or no Linux support!

[drsquare]

Why would using Linux within your own company have anything to do with providing support for people using Linux for a video link in a story? You'd have a point if the story was aimed at people within their company who were using Linux, but it's not, so your point is completely irrelevent.

Re:GFS

[AKAImBatman]

I mean, they are both distributed filesystems with the same name. What are the odds? ;)

Considering that it's in vogue to name file systems with one letter in front of "FS"? About 1 in 26. The odds are even better if you discount commonly used file systems such as XFS, UFS, FFS, NFS, and JFS.

Re:G4/TechTV

[Schwarzchild]

Discovery channel is a shadow of its former self. They used to actually show science programs. Now all of their programming is merely Hotrod this or that.

Re:50% female is the goal

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is sexist. They should hire someone because the person is competent, not because they're competent and lack a penis

Re:Dirt? That more like modelling clay

[Mac Degger]

I always love these rants: my brother thinks the same thing. But there is one thing you forget: Google is now a public company; a corporation. Expecially at the time just before IPO, their whole business was public...you wanted to know how Google got it's money? You shoulda read the prospectus and assorted extra materials. You read anything about a 'pre-emptive investment department' operating on webbased intel? No, you didn't, nor anything even slightly similar.

So either put up (evidence) or shut up.

Re:G4/TechTV

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, even TLC used to have science programming before it turned into the Home-Makeover-Reality-Channel.

Re:G4/TechTV

[glitch23]

It's better than the evolution propagranda they like spreading, although that is still shown sometimes. If they can't stop spreading progaganda then don't air the shows at all. And if you want science there is always Discovery *Science* to watch. Discovery doesn't have to restrict itself to only science shows when they have other channels to fulfill that.