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Google Businesses The Internet

Google Plans to Reveal Some of its Code 383

Posted by CmdrTaco from the could-you-be-more-vague-please dept.
Andy Beal writes "According to Australia's The Age, Google plans to reveal some of the code it uses to great success. It says ' "The time has come for Google to "give something back", Wayne Rosing, the company's vice-president of engineering, told students while on a recruiting drive in Melbourne last week. "There have been a lot of conversations in the company in the past two months about (how) . . . it's time for us to give something back. So our technical director, Craig Silverstein, has started a project to look at all the Google code and start figuring out what parts of it we want to give back," Rosing said.'"
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Google Plans to Reveal Some of its Code More

Google Plans to Reveal Some of its Code

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  • and Sun is "opening" Java... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:15AM (#9494502)
    We have heard so much talk recently about the "open sourcing" of this piece of software and that piece of software that I just don't know if we should believe any of it anymore.

    While Google is probably telling more of a truth than Sun is how do we really know until we see the code?

    If a team is now just determining which code should be released we may not see anything useful come of this for months or even more. How about we hold off on these stories until we see something more than just a press release.

  • Yahoo! (Score:5, Funny)

    by xenostar ( 746407 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:15AM (#9494503)
    In other news, Yahoo! announced it will be completely overhauling its search engine.
  • Microsoft will smile, but pigeons will frown.
  • A recruiting drive in Melbourne?
    Why wasn't I informed? (nice one RMIT, keeping us students in the know)

  • Give something back? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by slavefishy ( 728826 ) <fukmsNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:15AM (#9494515) Homepage
    I whole-heartedly support open source and I think it's great they're going to reveal some of their code, but I don't feel that Google owes the community anything; they already provide top quality services.
    • but I don't feel that Google owes the community anything; they already provide top quality services

      Au contraire, mon ami poisson esclave.

      Google wouldn't exist if it weren't for people creating/putting content on the Internet... (or, if you belong to the tinfoil hat crowd, putting your personal data online).

      But it may not be so much a "debt" relationship as it is a symbiotic one between Google (and other search engines) and Internet users... without content, no search engine... without search engines, ha

    • I agree (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Per Abrahamsen ( 1397 )
      I suspect almost all free software developers use services provided by Google. I certainly feel Google in so many ways have made the net a better place for me, that I feel more than compensated for any software of mine they may use.

      It might be a good idea and in their own interest for them to contribute financially to some of the free "core" technologies they use. I don't see them in the osdl memberlist [osdl.org] for example.

    • Re:Give something back? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @10:48AM (#9495592)
      I think they do owe the community a lot. They are breaking the spirit of GNU. The idea behind open source is that if I choose to publish my stuff under GNU, you can take my code, work with it, sell it, but I get your improvements and use that myself. This works great if software is something that you buy or download, but it doesn't work if it is a service like google. If I was say a coder on an open source IMAP client and google used my code as a basis for gmail, they could keep all the code for themselves. Google is using a lot of open source software but they are not giving any of there improvements back to the community. I know Google is nice and all, but as software gets more service oriented this could be a problem in the future.
  • Preview of source code to be released:
    int main()
    {
    // magic google code removed

    // Rest of code

    // How many records did we "find"?
    int random1 = rand();
    int random2 = rand();
    int random3 = rand();
    int random4 = rand();

    cout << "Results 1 - 10 of about " << random1 * random2 ^ random3 << "for " << SEARCH_ENTRY << ". ( " << random4 << "seconds)";

    }

  • give back? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OmniVector ( 569062 ) <see my homepage> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:16AM (#9494525) Homepage
    Google's done so much for the quality of web searching that I think they've already given us far more back than I could ever ask for. The only thing I could ask of them is to keep up the good work, and try and keep pagerank useful by stopping exploiters who falsely boost ranks. Other than that, some good old free thinking and continual innovation for the web, which is what they do all the time, is little to ask for. I just hope the momentum doesn't die.

    • Re:give back? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Otter ( 3800 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:47AM (#9494832) Journal
      To put it a different way (and this isn't directed specifically at you, just a general observation consistent with what you said) -- the people who do most of the screaming about "Free! Free! You owe it to The Community after everything We've done for you!" have no interest in or use for source code themselves. They just want something for free. See any Apple article for examples.

      Everything from Google already is free (beer). If they decide to open some code, I'm sure it will be fascinating reading for CS people interested in searching or scalability, but the noisy "community" couldn't care less.

    • Re:give back? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AviLazar ( 741826 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:56AM (#9494919) Journal
      I don't necessarily see that as "giving" They are a for profit organization. While they provide a service that is 'free' to the end-user, it is still paid for by advertisers. The fact that they are the best at it does not elevate them to a status of saints (for lack of better words).
      Depending on the code they will show (assuming this is not a lame stunt) they will actually be "giving back" to the community.
      Otherwise, they can open their fat pocket books and make donations like everyone else :)
      • Hear Hear, this google worship amazes me. I think I have enjoyed far more free as in beer content from ABC/NBC/CBS than I have from google, yet you would never hear these guys adulated in the same way that google is. Yeah they use linux but so do plenty of other companies, unlike google they don't find it necessary to say aren't we so effin cool, we use linux.

    • Re:give back? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by iabervon ( 1971 )
      The community they're giving back to is not the people who search the web, but the people who develop software they use. Of course, practically anyone who develops software searches the web, but the service isn't really a repayment in kind.

      In addition to their web searching engine, they have a whole lot of interesting software. Their PDF to HTML converter, for example, is nicer in some ways than any PDF viewer I've seen for Linux. They clearly have some useful tools for transforming HTML, as well (highlig

  • Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by r1ch ( 166865 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:16AM (#9494528)
    Although Google obviously won't be releasing it's search algorithms it might well release the code for things like the Google FileSystem (PDF) [rochester.edu] which may benefit a lot of people.
    • Although Google obviously won't be releasing it's search algorithms it might well release the code for things like the Google FileSystem (PDF) which may benefit a lot of people.
      If this was to happen just imagine how much longer we would have to wait for Microsoft to release Longhorn.

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:29AM (#9494648) Homepage Journal
      The actual source surely isnt actually *that* important. It might have been way back in the beginning, but not so much anymore.

      I'm quite convinced that the code itself is relatively simple, each node handling its own small piece of the puzzle.

      It would take years before anyone actually making use of the code could build up the infrastructure and reputation that google has got, in the meantim,e we could make some seriously funky projects out of it.

      I would love to be able to incroporate google search algorythms and procedures into (for instance) an SQL query, and allow searching of the myriad of OFFLINE data we have here.

      "select (feeling_lucky) from customerrecords ..."

      At the very worst, the code becomes an academic curiosity, at the best, googles algorythm becomes as well adapted as Huffman coding or the bubblesort.

      • It's a lot like slashcode (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {nahsei}> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:48AM (#9494842) Homepage Journal
        It's a lot like slashcode, really. Lots of great websites run slash, but none of them have the popularity or following that the original has.

        Plus, Slashdot gets to "brand" websites with it's look, feel, and system. No matter how much you skin slashcode, it still feels like slashdot in the end, even if it wasn't intentional.

        Read the slashdot FAQ, and you see exactly the same kind of response you would expect. Good luck making your own with just the source!

      • Re:Excellent! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by travail_jgd ( 80602 )
        "It would take years before anyone actually making use of the code could build up the infrastructure and reputation that google has got"

        Let's say a company wants to buy their way into the search engine business...

        If each PC cost an average of $3000US (to include large amounts of RAM, networking infrastructure, etc) 50,000 of them would cost a "whopping" $150 million. That's a lot of cash for a startup, but pocket change for Apple, IBM, or Microsoft.

        Both IBM and Microsoft have the programming resources to

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ses4j ( 307318 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:34AM (#9494717) Homepage
      Although Google obviously won't be releasing it's search algorithms it might well release the code for things like the Google FileSystem (PDF) which may benefit a lot of people.

      I totally disagree. I think the GoogleFS is a much more valuable commodity than the search algos. I mean, frankly, I doubt think the search algos are that brilliant, past the initial lightbulb of PageRank... just refinements and optimizations. The tough part is harnessing the -insane- computing power necessary to serve the world's searching needs, and doing it cheaply.

      Despite that, I do hope you're right, and maybe you are... since the distributed FS/OS they've developed is, like I said, so much more valuable. What good would search algorithm descriptions do anyone except aid their competition? I can't stick Google's algorithms into anything I have... but a nifto OS that can combine a few computers and let me run stuff across them trivially? -THAT'S PRETTY COOL-

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:3, Informative)

      by GeorgeH ( 5469 )
      Didn't they publish their search algorithms in Patent 6,285,999 [uspto.gov] "Method for node ranking in a linked database"? That's the PageRank algorithm; since it's patented it's publicly documented and available for public use 21 years later.

  • what next? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KrisCowboy ( 776288 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:17AM (#9494531) Journal
    The best search engine...one of the best translators, damn good webmail...what next? Guess it's time for gmessenger!!!

    • Re:what next? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hey ( 83763 )
      It would be great if Google would adopt and popularise Jabber.
    • When we have Jabber [jabber.org]. Jabber is as open as a messenger can ever get.

      Blockquoth their site:
      the Jabber protocols are free, open, public, and easily understandable; in addition, multiple implementations exist for clients, servers, components, and code libraries.


      You can run your own server. Jabber is never down, is and will always be open, and doesn't crap over you with ads.
  • What I want to see is whatever mods they've created to make managing the enormous uber-cluster(s) that make the place tick. Plus, more than likely, they won't reveal the search code anyway...

    But I salivate to review the code to their management tools.

  • Just don't help the optomizers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by weave ( 48069 ) * on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:17AM (#9494534) Journal
    I'm sure google isn't stupid, but I'd hate for them to reveal anything that the search engine "optomizers" will leverage to further spam the search results.

  • What code ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:17AM (#9494536)
    A Google Toolbar running on Linux would be a good start...
  • They're business strategy flips me out the more I learn about it.
    Wish I had a crystal ball, or a crystal search engine to see where they're going to go with their 'relevant content' model next. Is there a hole in their approach? Seems pretty strong! Will be intersting to get a look at their financials after public offering.

  • Good ol' google (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LaserLyte ( 725803 ) * on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:17AM (#9494538)
    I think the average web user would be pretty surprised to see what actually goes on behind the scenes at Google. That simple search page which holds very little content -- the search controls, a logo, and a few links -- is actually a front to a mighty army of servers, and some fairly advanced search technology.

    I for one know I often take Google for granted. Yet I use it many times, virtually every day. In return for a free service, I get to see a few tiny, highly-revelant unintrusive ads placed alongside my search.

    The only improvement for Google I can think of is for them to add regex searches :D. A lot of pitfalls and obstacles come to mind for that though.

    Anyway, I can't wait to see what Google actually "gives back to us" in terms of source code. Can they give enough source to be interesting/useful without helping out their competitors too much?
    • The only improvement for Google I can think of is for them to add regex searches :D. A lot of pitfalls and obstacles come to mind for that though.

      I'd like to see proximity searches, like "Jane within 5 words of Doe" or "atomic within the same paragraph as mutants". Too often, I am left wanting a compromise between searching for an exact phrase and searching for the words in that phrase, and not getting the correct results.
    • Reno 911! Dangle: Jones, run his name through the computer. Jones: Should I Google him? Dangle: Google? You have a f--king police computer. You don't need to use f--king Google. You're spending too much time looking for Internet porn.
    • I think the average web user would be pretty surprised to see what actually goes on behind the scenes at Google. That simple search page which holds very little content -- the search controls, a logo, and a few links -- is actually a front to a mighty army of servers, and some fairly advanced search technology.
      The "average" web user couldn't tell the difference between a line of code and a two year old's scribbling
      "Cout? What's a cout? Boy, you've made a typo - you meant to say clout. You know, what p

  • "Back"? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by InternationalCow ( 681980 ) <.mauricevansteensel. .at. .mac.com.> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:17AM (#9494539) Journal
    Giving something back implies that they took something from the users (?) and are now paying back. So, what did they take? Is there F/OSS code in their code? Or do they just want to thank the users for using their services? In that case, I'd take a Gmail account, please :)

    • Re:"Back"? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phurley ( 65499 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:33AM (#9494704) Homepage
      Well it is common knowledge that they run their system off of (lots and lots of) Linux servers. So maybe that is what they mean by "give back"

  • why do they have to give something back? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by chrisopherpace ( 756918 ) <cpace@hnsg. n e t> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:18AM (#9494542) Homepage
    I love Google, and think this is an excellent idea, but geeks owe Google, not vice-versa. Geeks (and normal users as well) depend on Google. While it could be said that Google does the same, and makes its money from geeks and users, they do not, IMHO owe us anything.

    • Re:why do they have to give something back? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jokerghost ( 467848 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:42AM (#9494781)
      They don't "have to" give anything back, but the idea is that they are acting altruistically. They feel that the public has supported their company (via usage, interest in the IPO, jobs, income, etc), that they recipricolly owe something substantial to the consumer.

      Read a little Ayn Rand (like Atlas Shrugged) for the concept... Essentially, corporations (whether private or not) derive their status as a legal "person" from implicit trust the public has placed in them. As such, corporations have an obligation to provide service back to the community and to act in a moral fashon... I for one am glad to see that this company is acting in this accord, instead of all of the depravity we have seen as of late.

      -jokerghost
  • how they will manage to do that without shooting themselves in the foot?
  • They already showed the algorithm they use for Pagerank, and let's see... they have thousands of systems all hooked together, that process terabytes of data every month. That sounds more like hard work and money than magic. The magic will be how they are keeping Microsoft at bay.

  • Good for everyone (Score:2, Insightful)

    by meganthom ( 259885 )
    With all the possibilities for type-specific search engines, this seems like a great step forward. Perhaps some day, I will be able to hum a song I heard on the radio into my computer and find links to the performer, composer, etc. If I am designing a new machine, I might be able to search for pre-existing components over large networks instead of through local libraries. Mmm...

  • extending its API? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by eztiger ( 790405 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:21AM (#9494571)
    Could this be an extension of the google API set ?

    http://www.google.com/apis/

    Co-inciding with a launch of gmail, this could lead to a slew of advanced 3rd party gmail apps like 'pop goes the gmail'

  • They Already Give Back (Score:5, Insightful)

    by N8F8 ( 4562 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:21AM (#9494573)
    Seriuosly folks, they probaly make me 30% more effective because I can find the information I need more quickly than anyplace else.
  • I know I won't be releasing any of the souce code to any of the back-end things I've written for my web site.

    People would just laugh at it.

    Disclaimer for the clueless: I'm not a programmer, so my code sucks so bad it's funny.

  • I wonder... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by PTDC ( 690049 )
    ...what license the code will be released under.
  • Google provides an ad-supported service...for a profit. They are about to become a publicly-held company with the intention of...continuing to make a profit. I don't believe that Google owes the open source community anything---some may feel it's noble, but I think that it helps promote a certain "debtor" feeling, as if success should bring out timidity and apologies and giveaways. Google's competitors would be better served by innovating on their own and sticking it to them with better search results and more value-added features.
    • Well, from what I've read, part of the reason Google is so successful is because they've had a lot of smart people contribute good ideas that have allowed them to thrive. Part of the way they attract and keep these smart people is to let them entertain and challenge themselves by working on personal projects, do research, ect. and release the results to the general public.

      This just sounds like it's an extension of that philosophy. Some of the smart people who have worked on Google code know their code p

  • Releasing the page rank formula would allow microsoft/yahoo/inktomi to create their own uber-search engines. But those companies have very different visions w.r.t. what makes a "good" feature. Google's tangible value is in Page Rank; while the sparsity of its pages makes it aesthetic and simple to use, that may not be enough to keep it alive.

    OTOH, I would love to be able to play around with GMail's source code. And they could probably release code for, say, GoogleGroups, although I'm not sure why they'd

  • Here's some more code (Score:3, Funny)

    by callipygian-showsyst ( 631222 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:34AM (#9494713) Homepage
    using System.XML;

    [...]

    if (ContainsAdSenseAds())
    {
    pageRank++;
    }

  • Time to "give something back?" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mr. Neutron ( 3115 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:39AM (#9494750) Homepage Journal
    In my mind, Google's free service has provided the world value somewhere in the order of trillions of dollars. Information gathering that once required a trip to the library and several hours searching through card catalogs and books, can now be done in mere seconds. I don't think they owe anyone anything.

    It amazes me sometimes, their level of altruism.

  • No need (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Captain_Chaos ( 103843 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:40AM (#9494763)
    Google doesn't have to give anything back, at least not to me. It's enough for me that they are by far the best search engine; lightning fast, accurate, comprehensive, free and with no obtrusive advertising...

  • Not the first time. (Score:3, Informative)

    by TXP ( 592446 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @09:53AM (#9494872)
    They released some of their code in previous programming contests. The code allowed users to access their compressed data file format(compressed/indexed HTML) and quickly run seachs on them. As well they provided 20->200 megs of sample data. (Something like that) It was a couple years ago. April 30 2002. http://www.google.com/programming-contest/
  • I hate to be the closed minded one again, but I think this is a bad idea. One of the coolest things about google is that no one really knows how it all works. It's like Willie Wonka the candy just shows up in a little box. And with the competition revamping and reworking everything they can to catch up to the googlites, I think this is a bad idea.

    I think that 5 years from now, they may look back and say, you know if we hadn't reveal line 5267 of our code, MSN and Yahoo wouldn't be kicking our asses right

  • Gmail tech ? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dabossuk ( 790475 )
    Hi

    Does anyone know if gmail was an inhouse devleopment ? Or is it third party. I am interested on becuase I notice that when it load of gmail it says "please wait ..." can I assume that in fact this is some sort of Java applet that is loading. I noticed that someone sent me an email to my account - and it appeared without me having to rfresh the browser - did not see a hidden frame / meta fresh either - interested to know how they are doing this.

    Paul

  • Visibility (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 4lex ( 648184 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @10:05AM (#9495032) Homepage Journal
    As make extensive use of linux, might I suggest that they include a tiny picture with the text "Google is powered by linux" with the search results? Maybe at the bottom, where you can't barely see it... but it will be enough to raise linux visibility a lot, if google users (i.e.: every internet user) realizes that linux is powerful enough for google.

  • Page rank no magic -- just plain old science (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ikoflexer ( 779106 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @10:08AM (#9495073)

    Seeing some of the euphoric comments here is pretty interesting. It just shows how good googleans are at maintaining their "we're the good guys" image. And that's good, because indeed they seem to have cleaner business practices than many other.

    However, let's set the record straight here. There is no magic algorithms and most likely no new science in the technology google uses for search. The original page ranking paper published by Sergei et al. explained the entire algorithm, and data structures they needed to have a fast search. The paper was quite detailed. It's good old computer science. Nothing extraordinarily outrageous about it (from a mathematical standpoint), except that it worked damn well: it leveraged human knowledge, which is something a lot of people don't yet either understand the importance of, or don't know how to do it.

    Since then, google has improved on the original algorithm, data structures, and overall implementation. But the main technology was in plain sight from the beginning.

    My guess to why google is releasing some source code is because it will pay off for them. Forget the "give back" bit. It'll improve the image, and, potentially they might benefit from people using that source. How? Not clear yet until we see the source code.

    In any case, as slashdotters ubergeeks we should keep a cool head and look at what google will show. I'm 100% sure that if they said they release some source they'll do it. You see, it would hurt their image if they didn't, and they're too good at image management to make such a stupid mistake.

    It's obviously a strategic move on their part, just that we don't see yet the real reason for it.

    BTW, it's just a matter of time for MS or Yahoo to incorporate this type of technology into their search engines, and google knows that. As they loose their technological edge over the competitors, keeping a good image is very important. As is branching out into other services (e.g. gmail).

    Just my 2c.

  • API and source code: This could get interesting (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WallaceSz ( 643543 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @10:20AM (#9495217)
    Google released its Web APIs [google.com] back in April 2002. Since then a number of successful products have evolved, including Google Dance Tool [google-dance-tool.com] and the Google Alert [googlealert.com] alerting service.

    Google has been unclear about their future plans for the API, though it seems that it has allowed some apps to go commercial - see this article [theregister.co.uk].

    One wonders if this source code will actually add value to the developer community, or is simply a way of counteracting the capitalistic vibes of the IPO.

  • Not code, just papers (Score:5, Informative)

    by glinden ( 56181 ) * on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @10:37AM (#9495408) Homepage Journal
    In the article, Wayne Rosing explicitly says that Google is not planning on open-sourcing the Google code base, but that they will publish academic papers on their work. "I'm not saying we're going to open-source Google, because that would be a little dumb when we have these Microsoft guys making noise. . . We're encouraging the software engineers to submit papers where it makes sense, particularly where it is landmark work and it is really important that other people know."

    Google already has published [blogspot.com] a number of papers on their systems, including descriptions of PageRank, their clustering architecture, and their high availability file system (the Google File System). Seems like this is merely an announcement that they intend to do more of the same.

  • Sneak Preview of the Code from Google (Score:4, Funny)

    by GweeDo ( 127172 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @10:38AM (#9495423) Homepage
    /*
    * Allocate 'size' units from the given map.
    * Return the base of the allocated space.
    * In a map, the addresses are increasing and the
    * list is terminated by a 0 size.
    * Algorithm is first-fit.
    */

    ulong_t
    atealloc(
    struct map *mp,
    size_t size)
    {
    register unsigned int a;
    register struct map *bp;
    register unsigned long s;

    SCO's not going to be happy about this ;)

  • Giving back or snapping back? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mr_Huber ( 160160 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @03:51PM (#9499480) Homepage
    After reading through this [joelonsoftware.com] article about the fall of the Win32 API, I think Google may be doing something a bit more clever than simply 'giving back'.

    The article discusses how the plethora of APIs Microsoft is shipping and uncertainty of just when the APIs will be on real hardware have caused new development to move to the web (for example, building a new email client). It also mentions there are several drawbacks to web programming, but the author expects them to be overcome soon, further sapping the appeal of the Win32 API.

    Perhaps this is exactly Google's strategy. How better to further enhance the desireability of web programming versus desktop programming than by demonstraiting in source how to perform some really compelling features? How many developers will take these techniques and use them at the heart of new killer apps; apps that run on any web browser rather than locked to a specific API?

    Google may be giving a small bit away, but the potential gains in mindshare among developers may be much, much greater than the loss of this already paid for source code. Further, if the code in question relies on a particular technology, protocol or standard they are well versed in, they have succeeded in enticing developers to play in their sandbox.

    Quite clever, really.

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