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Google Businesses The Internet Communications Hardware Technology

Google's Head of Research — We Don't Do Hardware 94

Posted by Zonk from the to-the-gmobile dept.
mr_sifter writes "In a recent, wide-ranging interview Google's Head of Research, Dr Peter Norvig, revealed the firm has no interest in developing its own hardware. (Except a phone, apparently.) Said Norvig, 'We want to work everywhere and be neutral. That neutrality is important.' Interestingly, Norvig is tough on where the company's priorities are at the moment, saying: 'I think there could be much better tools, we're [Google] still kind of isolated in what we do. You give us a question and we give you an answer ... We're really focused on either the five second-type question ... We don't really support the five month or the five year queries, the project or life-long goal.' He also talks about the importance of adding a narrative to search, mobile technology, and how Google's strong financials mean the company can run research in an unusual way."
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Google's Head of Research — We Don't Do Hardware More

Google's Head of Research — We Don't Do Hardware

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  • Oh no!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by wandazulu ( 265281 ) on Friday September 14, 2007 @12:04PM (#20605205)
    My Google Search Appliance just disappeared in a poof of smoke and logic!
    • At least yours just disappeared. Ours got up, gave us the finger, then walked off.

      • At least yours just disappeared. Ours got up, gave us the finger, then walked off.

        At least your's left. My Google Earth just sits on my couch and eats all my resources. And I think it made a pass at my girlfriend

        .

        .

        Okay, I made up that part of having a girlfriend.

    • It's ironic you should say that. We had two drives fail our our last GSA. After the first red light, they told us to wait. A couple days later we got our second and lost our search ability for a few days (falling back to good ol' Microsoft Index Server).

      A few days ago, we started getting weird search results and you couldn't get to the admin console. After talking to the folks in operations, it turns out we had an endless list of file errors scrolling away on the screen. Now Google tech support is p
    • Based on my calculations, Google maintains ~ 700 petabytes of data.

  • Is that "do" as in "make"... (Score:3, Funny)

    by eno2001 ( 527078 ) on Friday September 14, 2007 @12:07PM (#20605263) Homepage Journal
    ...or "do" as in "copulate with". Because if it's the later, I'm glad to hear they aren't going the route of Microsoft developers. ;P
    • I'm just glad they know what to concentrate on instead of putting out shoddy equipment with light rings that turn an unfavorable color after playing for an hour or so.

  • I remember another company once said this... (Score:3, Funny)

    by downix ( 84795 ) on Friday September 14, 2007 @12:08PM (#20605267) Homepage
    I remember when Microsoft was all "We don't do hardware"...

    **looks at his co-workers X-box, microsoft mouse and microsoft joystick**

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by apt142 ( 574425 )
      The funny thing is, MS arguably has better hardware than they have software.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by king-manic ( 409855 )
        Really? [wikipedia.org]
        • He's talking about their mice and keyboards.
          • And he's totally right too. I am using a 7 or 8 year old MS Optical Wheel Mouse that has literally outlived several dozen Apple and Logitech mice in our office. And it has great features and feels nice on the hand and wrist as well. It seems that MS must outsource production of their input hardware, but whoever does it must be getting paid well and have good qualifications because overall their keyboards/mice/joystick equipment Just Works(tm), even with Macs.

            It's the one group of offerings from MS I can

            • And he's totally right too. I am using a 7 or 8 year old MS Optical Wheel Mouse that has literally outlived several dozen Apple and Logitech mice in our office. And it has great features and feels nice on the hand and wrist as well.

              Absolutely. I'm currently using a Microsoft optical travel mouse and Microsoft Internet Keyboard, which I bought on the merits of the brand (!), and they're excellent. The keyboard is even designed for easy maintenance: you undo a couple of screws underneath, and the entire top

          • I'm aware, I think he should have qualified that statement to be pc hardware. I am now using a MS mouse and keyboard to type this but all of my friends 360's have broken.
            Sample size: 12
            failure rate out of this sample: 100%

            Likely locality of failure correlation. There might be some monster bump between here and the main MS warehouse, but the other electronics manufacturers don't have a similiar problem.

      • The funny thing is, MS arguably has better hardware than they have software.
        You're wrong. I have a Microsoft keyboard, and it sucks about as much as their operating system.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by empaler ( 130732 )
          Running it on Vista?

          Seriously, I have a MS-keyb+mouse set, and it's awesome. Probably one of the best keyboards I've had - only, as soon as I installed Vista, half the cool functions weren't available. Kind of embarassing, that.
          • If I could get my MS keyboard to mate with my IBM Model-M I would be very happy with the offspring (except the retarded one with mushy keys and a non-bent layout).
            -nB

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by bobcat7677 ( 561727 )
          Microsoft WIRED Mice and Keyboards are pretty good. My first mouse was a Microsoft mouse and it lasted for a LONG time. Their wireless gear on the other hand sucks monkey ass. I have yet to touch a wireless microsoft mouse that didn't suffer from interference problems or render my system completely unusable (including locking up the wired keyboard) when the batteries got the slightest bit low. The one I bought for myself sits in a box even though it has the best resolution of all my mice. The conferenc

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Realistic_Dragon ( 655151 )
            Microsoft WIRED Mice and Keyboards are pretty good.

            Too true. I have a first gen MS optical intellimouse that has seen 6+ hours of use per day for about 11 years now without failure. Hell the thing is so old that I didn't even dislike Microsoft when I bought it! Fortunately the logo rubbed off around 1999 and these days no one can recognise it.

            In fact when it was new my top-end machine was a blistering 400mhz PII with 64mb of ram running Win95. Who the hell knew that that Microsoft could make anything
            • 11 years

              Checking the release date it seems that it has actually only been 8 years and 17,520 hours of use. Which is still 17,499 hours longer than my copy of Win95 went without a critical failure.

              Given that a typical mouse of the era has a tracking speed of 10 in/s that's actually enough time to have pushed the thing 9,955 miles - which by some amazing co-incidence is exactly the distance from my current location to 1 Microsoft Way, Redmond and back again.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by cp.tar ( 871488 )

        The funny thing is, MS arguably has better hardware than they have software.

        <troll>Well, it could hardly be worse.</troll>
    • That must have been a long time ago...I'm still using the MS keyboard that came with a CTX computer I picked up about 10 years ago. One of the only MS products that's withstood the test of time.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by iabervon ( 1971 )
      You've got a good memory, then. I had a Microsoft mouse for my IBM XT 20 years ago. I hear they eventually made a GUI that used it, too, that's become somewhat popular. Unfortunately, they didn't document it nearly as well as their mice, so it isn't nearly as nice to work with.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by drix ( 4602 )
      Which is funny, because Microsoft's (PC) hardware has always been top-notch. Compare with software.

  • Of course! (Score:4, Informative)

    by biocute ( 936687 ) on Friday September 14, 2007 @12:14PM (#20605357)
    Define hardware [google.com] : major items of military weaponry (as tanks or missile)
  • From : http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/ [google.com]:

    The Google Mini offers the simplicity and power of Google's enterprise search technology at a great price. An integrated hardware and software solution, the Mini offers true plug-and-play installation and can be purchased online. Whether you're looking to search your company's internal information or your public website, the Mini has the features for your business.

  • "can i have your job?"

    seriously, do i not speak for the slashdot community when, considering this guy's resources and job description and everything else, i find my mind consumed with one concept?:

    E-N-V-Y

    does this guy not have the perfect slashdotter's job or what?

    • does this guy not have the perfect slashdotter's job or what?
      Not quite. He has the resources, but he also has to do a lot of management and talking to the press. I suspect a few ranks down is the sweet spot for playing with shiny toys Vs. responsibility. If anyone from Google's reading this, I'm totally available for that job...
  • So who will supply the wireless hardware for the frequencies you are bidding on?

    • One conceivable solution would be to subcontract out hardware design and development and then just have whoever is manufacturing it put the Google brand on it. Basically, Google supplies the specs, software and supporting infrastructure and someone else pumps out the widgets. Then, marketing of said widget is done virally (e.g. "invite a friend to try Google __________ beta.").

  • Responding to issues of accessibility Dr. Norvig analogizes his answer: "If you cut out the curbs it helps wheelchair users - and it also help bicyclists and skateboarders and so on."


    The Dr forgot to mention it's easier for cars to run over pedestrians and for wheelchairs to get stuck in transport grills like this guy [dhadm.com].

  • "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware."

    --Alan Kay

  • Google does do hardware (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DrDitto ( 962751 ) on Friday September 14, 2007 @12:24PM (#20605501)
    Just look at the job postings:

    http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/egr/408676278.html [craigslist.org]

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by morgan_greywolf ( 835522 )
      Just because Google needs hardware to run its operations, and thus, hardware testing engineers to test new hardware and infrastructures, doesn't mean that they 'do hardware.'

      Or were you trying to be funny?
  • From TFA:
     

    We don't really support the five month or the five year queries, the project or life-long goal.

     
    This quote explains much about Google's consistently unfocused progress with many applications remaining incompletely integrated with the others and often incomplete or in endless 'beta'. If I were an investor in GOOG, I'd be even more nervous now than before.
  • Maybe google has no official hardware initiative to share with analysts, who are focused on money-making ventures. But google's researchers apparently have the freedom to dabble in computer hardware quite a bit...

    http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/26/2039213 [slashdot.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ahfoo ( 223186 )
      Yeah, I wrote to them on that because there was that PDF mentioned in that thread which said they were going to open up their spec.
      I wrote to the address and asked for more info on the project and explained how I had built various power supplies for DIY projects and lived in Taiwan so I had great access to a wide range of cheap retail electronics parts. I also mentioned that I had plenty of spare hardware sitting around and would like to try putting together some of their design
  • That's good, I was worried for a second that they did, hope they don't keep sheep around as backup.
  • Attack of the brain-eating Google zombies, film at 11

  • Don't believe this (Score:4, Insightful)

    by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Friday September 14, 2007 @01:24PM (#20606299)
    They said they won't do email, chat, financial information, spreadsheets or horoscopes (making fun of Yahoo and Microsoft).

    And short of horoscopes, they now do all of this.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by skeevy ( 926052 )
      All of those fall under the umbrella of collecting, indexing, and analyzing information generated by and about humans (horoscopes really fall under news feeds, though they're not news). This is what Google is about. They have their fingers into most areas of text information generation (the guy mentions it specifically) and are working on distilling information from sound and video.

      Google has got the relationships between data pretty much down. Next they will tackle relationships between people. Look for th

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by drspliff ( 652992 )
      They don't make hardware, and if I read the article correctly they don't plan to get into the that market.

      At the moment (iirc) their using off the shelf components bought in bulk to power their server farms. If you're buying anything close to the amount of hardware Google is using you need people who are well versed in the stuff in order to make the right architecture decisions. Otherwise you just get a huge 20+ geek argument about which Intel or AMD processor to use.

      Hiring hardware testers is not the same
  • I don't see any reason why Google would want to make hardware.
    Because, really, right now, what innovations are needed in hardware? And how would google's philosophy and past experience relate to inventing or perfecting some hardware that would really reach out and grab people?
    Not that the x86 architecture is perfect, of course it has lots of flaws, but it seems to be pretty well thought out and tested, and conceptually sound. So what reason is there for going into the hardware market?

    I mean, unless google c

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )
      nowadays going to hw market can be just buying the whole thing from some oem and customising the software a bit.

      they could "go" into cellphone market in a month.
  • When I worked for this shower of shits [macinations.net], one of the prime examples to give to potential customers as to why you shouldn't use Google's search facility is that it came in a sealed box, and any failures would result in it having to be sent back to the company. Mind you Autonomy would sell its own mother down the swannee for a belly full of ruin. The ****s !
  • While C or assembly give you great performance, there are days when what you really need is VHDL or Verilog ;-)

    There _was_ a search engine that employed custom built hardware. I remember I used it back in 96 or such.
  • The title is misleading (of course). A quick glance at Google's jobs [google.com] site clearly shows they have an entire Hardware category they're hiring for. Google is very interested in making hardware, but for internal consumption. All their servers, their racks, their power, everything in the data center is custom designed for/by them. I've even heard rumors that they're working on custom NICs and switches. Of course there's also the google search appliance.

    The point of the question was end-user; talking about

  • The original poster misunderstood what transpired in that interview. The journalist asked "access to you is mediated through other technologies. Is there any research ambition towards hardware?" Peter replied: "I don't think so. You know we want to work everywhere and be neutral. That neutrality is important." The journalist herself admitted that it's not very clear: "This agreeable but inscrutable response ..."

    It meant that we have no intention to bind users to hardware that works only with Google. Ge

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by sashang ( 608223 )
      To be honest I don't think any of the above qualifies as hardware development design or engineering. To my mind hardware development has to involve things like PCB layout and ASIC design, otherwise you're not really doing hardware development. Even so called 'firmware' for embedded systems is still really software.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by benjai ( 790721 )

        PCB layout by itself is hardly "development". These days the actual layout work is very often outsourced to layout houses. ASIC design is also not a requirement for "hardware development". What did people do before ASICs were invented? There are a lot of advanced systems that don't require ASICs, because the designers are smart enough to work around with cheap commodity components, while they could have used ASICs to waste money.

        We in fact also do a lot of research more advanced than these. More advan

  • Saw this one coming, they are already becoming completely out of touch with solving a problem and more into showing us old solutions in a new wrapper looking for problems. This is classic big company arrogance, and seeing them fall victim to this virus is wonderful. Search for something on Google lately and notice the plethora of commercial sites that come back as "hits" masked in obfuscated justification as to why they are relevant. Google does not have a crystal ball, and I personally don't want them layi
  • > We don't really support the five month or the five year queries, the project or life-long goal.

    Looks like I may have to find a new mail provider then.

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