There are two powerful software companies
which everyone knows and which get more
powerful each day. Microsoft determines how
the standard operating system looks like.
Google determines how the internet looks
like, it selects the information people
see from the internet.
Microsoft has 56,000 employees, but its
research group, with 700, is separate. In an
interview with Scientific American, the
Microsoft leader Bill Gates speaks on topics
ranging from AI to cosmology
PDF File
http://www.sciam.com/media/pdf/gates_interview.pdfHtml Site
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0005930F-3978-10AE-B97883414B7FFE9F&ref=sciam&chanID=sa004The other mighty company with absolute power is
Google. Google has only 1,900 employees, but
the company's employees include a former rocket
scientist and a former brain surgeon.
The estimates of how many machines Google has
in its datacenters range from 10,000 to 80,000.
"We have a philosophy of trying to develop
things scalably," Mr. Cutts from Google told
BBC News Online.
According to information from Google itself,
they have spent about $250 million on hardware
equipment. Therefore you can roughly estimate how
many machines their cluster has
* about 400-800 racks
* 30,000-80,000 machines
* 60,000-160,000 CPUs
* 63,000-160,000 GByte of RAM
* 2,500-6,100 TByte of Hard Disk Space
See
http://www.tnl.net/blog/entry/How_many_Google_machinesInside the Google search machine
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3783507.stmWhat's Google's Secret Weapon? An Army of Ph.D.'s
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/business/yourmoney/06digi.html?ex=1087099200&en=763bf971cea89e4c&ei=5062A deeper look into Google
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/?articleID=3948
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