Meet the new *G* operating system
Meet the new “G” operating system
As most of you know, the Windows operating system is the most popular and the most utilized personal computer operating platform in use today, and has been for a good number of years. Windows has made Microsoft the powerhouse it is today, thanks to its user-friendly interface and a number of other features that greatly simplify your daily life.
However, there is now a new computer operating system that is taking over, and it’s not coming from inside your personal computer, and it’s not from your company’s LAN (Local Area Network) or intranet network either. What I’m referring to here is the ‘G’ operating system, better known as the Google operating platform.
If you feel that for the past couple of years Google has managed to transform many people’s lives, you are not alone. We are witnessing a trend that will probably increase and will become even more widespread in the coming months and years.
Thanks to many of its PHD’s and engineers, and using its vast research labs in Mountain View California, Google is building a gigantic information system, complete with its own computer operating system that anybody can use, 24 hours a day.
How it all began
Almost without warning, engineers at the Googleplex have designed and built an extremely sophisticated computer network. What really boggles your mind is that this whole project originally took place as a simple idea, just a research initiative at Stanford University in the late 1990’s.
Google’s original founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page came up in 1998 with an experimental search engine they had developed. Using the Page Rank’ search algorithm that Larry Page had designed, Sergey worked with Larry to give birth to what is today one of the most exciting projects that ever came out of an American university. Of course, nobody knew at that time the success this simple idea would ave until today.
To make its search engine operate smoothly, Google is utilizing more than 10,000 (probably a lot more) servers, located in many of its data centers, situated mostly in North America. You could say that Google runs its own operating system. Its search engine now looks more like a huge information platform, a large data warehouse if you prefer, than just a simple computer cluster that would have been optimized for one single application.
With Google’s monthly update ‘dances’ and cycles, Google even makes its operating system even faster and more powerful each and every month, while at the same time drastically lowering the overall cost of all its operations, through revenue-generating contextual ads programs, such as its AdWords PPC (Pay-per-Click) and its AdSense initiatives.
What makes Google even more powerful?
Through its complex computing platform, Google has access to a gigantic map of the whole Internet, and it is now fully aware of how people ‘travel’ around in the virtual world it operates in. What makes Google even more powerful at this is it’s getting better and better at analyzing this large map. Furthermore, it is finding more and improved ways at ‘data mining’ all that precious information it collects from millions of users located all over the world and living in many different time zones.
Through its Blogger.com subsidiary, on any given hour of the day, Google knows exactly what people blog about. Through its vast search engine, it knows what topic or subject people are searching for. Thanks to it’s AdWords program, Google knows who wants to advertise and what for and exactly how effective those advertisements perform in real life and, in real time. Oh, and now, thanks to its Orkut portal, now Google knows about how people communicate with friends and loved ones.
If you are beginning to think this is a lot of information, it is! Today, information is power.
The parallel with the Windows operating system
In terms of worries, Google isn’t too concerned about Yahoo or Microsoft’s research projects, although the news media’s attention on that subject could eventually be to their own advantage. Only time will tell for sure.
Of course, Microsoft’s intention is to combine a search engine, right inside its new version of Windows, dubbed Longhorn. However, that version may not be ready until late 2005, early 2006. Light years away in terms of Internet speed.
Microsoft’s idea of such a search engine is to look into your hard drive for the keyword you typed in. If it can’t find it there, it is assumed your query will ‘go out on the Web’ to find it’ somewhere. Where exactly will that somewhere be is not known at this time’
Working in favour of the Redmund company of course is the fact that it is sitting on about 54 Billion of cash, enough money to feed many developing nations for years. Microsoft’s search engine project is still uncertain and leaves some observers perplexed as to how it wants to do it and what will happen next.
Search is what Google does best
So you might ask: who needs a local search engine in Windows or on your hard drive when anybody can have free and unlimited access to information residing on some of the world’s fastest computers? Can the ‘G’ operating system be the fastest and the most powerful when it comes to the information age? At first glance, it would appear to be so. After all, search is what Google does best, and it has certainly proven its ability to innovate in that field.
And let’s not forget all those people on the move out there’ People wanting to access information on mobile devices don’t need large or cumbersome operating systems. All they need is a fast and convenient way to search for information, using tiny LCD screens which are getting better, smaller and cheaper.
Such applications will be perfect if they can run on the ‘G’ operating system. Google could start developing such small and hybrid systems, using parts of Linux for its simplicity, low-cost and ease of use. Linux is also of the open source code, meaning that a whole set of additional applications could be developed around them, giving even more power and credence to the ‘G’ operating system.
All these systems and ‘apps’ would all have one thing in common: they would all query the Google database, whether it be Google’s large pool of information directly in its own search engine, or other sources which are close to Google’s heart, namely Blogger.com or the Orkut social portal that is still in its beta version.
Have you heard lately that Google wants to implement its free email system? Gmail is Google’s answer to free email offerings similar to Microsoft’s Hotmail and Yahoo, except it will offer up to one Gig of storage space, with a few more features to be announced at a later date. Again, this initiative is indicative of more things to come and more applications running on the ‘G’ operating platform.
Conclusion
Whether Google goes public or not this year or next, one thing is certain: similar to Microsoft in the mid to late nineties, Google now has become a real powerhouse. Its main asset is of course its huge database, which constitutes the sheer computing power of its fast search engine, used by more than 200 million people everyday.
At last count, Google’s index had over 4.2 billion pages in it, and it is rapidly growing everyday. It is estimated there are anywhere from 6 to 10 million new Web pages added to the Internet on any given day, and these numbers are said to be conservative.
The ‘G’ operating system might be closer than we think. It could happen faster than some are led to believe. If anything, it is to Google’s full advantage to do all of what’s in its power to help promote it’s new “operating system”, by providing the industry and the development community with all the tools it can offer.
Cooperation, planning and concerted efforts will go a long way towards achieving these goals. In fact, for the past 2 and a half years, Google makes available a set of developer tools called the Google API’s (Application Programmable Interface), further helping the development community get up to speed on the ‘G platform’.
With all it has going for itself, I predict that Google will probably double, maybe even triple in size over the next five years.
The next twelve months will be extremely interesting, both from an observer’s point of view, as well as in the user’s perspective of still new things to come, new developments that will take place and innovative new technologies being developed everyday.
Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
