Inside Google, data drives 'everything'

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>> Compare that to buying software licenses and maintenance from the old style software giants, and add the costs of server hardware, and IT managers to run them."

Or you could just run some Enterprise FOSS and hire or train internal staff to take care of it. Depends on the scale of the operation and depends on weather you trust this particular company. I'd be much more willing to believe them if any small company could start their own Apps cloud where data from one could be migrated to another, should unforeseen things happen.

In soviet Russia...

...data drives you!

Had to be said, sorry.

Don Dodge

I just wanted to say he has an incredible name.

Google has discovered the Holy Grail

As a data warehouse guy for the past 20+ years, what Don is preaching is something I have personally observed in a number of companies that have built enterprise data warehouses and drive the use of the data in their decisions. Not all of them have remained true to the "cause": mid- and upper-level managers usually derail the data-driven process when they see it as a threat to their own viability.

And it's not JUST the data. Interpretation and context are crucial to using data - especially detail data - to drive valid decisions. It's tough to build and maintain an accurate business model that actually uses data correctly. The maintenance is really the tough part: as your business changes, you need to revise or replace large chunks of the enterprise model and the way the departmental components integrate into the whole. This effort is very large, complex, and can become unfocused due to the intrinsic disbelief of MBA types - both in not believing that the data is telling the (counter-intuitive) truth, but also because the cost of this dedicated maintenance is not cheap. But cutting corners corrupts the entire process...and there are corpses of companies along the EDW road that failed to do their analysis or cut too many corners.

I wish Google the greatest of luck with this process. I hope they can keep it working for as many years as IBM.

Those massages....

Do they ever lead to a happy ending?

Oh dear...

"I think 2010 will be the year that enterprises of all sizes start their transition to Gmail and Google Apps, and take their first steps towards the vision of the future. The move towards Cloud Computing is obvious," he says.

Well, he would say that, wouldn't he, working for Google and all! Yeah right, like it was obvious 10 years ago that Thin Clients were the 'future'.

Can we have a tumbleweed icon?

No duh!

"He does not point out that Gmail and Google Apps are also a means of collecting your data."

Wow, I guess it is important to state the obvious. Google is a capitalist company. TANSTAAFL so if they offer a "free" service, then they are getting something from it.

Your e-mails are theirs to use as they like. ;-)

"Do no evil" is starting to sound like Bill Clinton when he was under oath...

it had to be said ....

Says Don Dodge "Google really likes data"

"any less is just a non starta"

"I'm now way to lofty"

"to be microsofty"

"thank Christ my desk's not near a farta"

Costs? 500 a year? No.

My server for email, files, printing is Running Windows 2000, MDaemon, Apache, IIS, MYSQL, SQL7.0. Since install it has cost nothing other than electricity.

It serves 6 people.

The PCs and laptops run a mix of Ubuntu, Win98 (programming set-boxes/mobile radio), Win2k, XP, MS Office Apps, Open Office as well as all our specialist applications.

2001 was the last time we bought MS apps.

5 PCs with XP, two dual boot with Ubuntu

2 Netbooks (Linux)

1 Laptop multiboot DOS/Win3.11, Win98, Win2K and Ubuntu

3 laptop XP

1 Laptop Ubuntu

1 Laptop Dual Boot XP and Ubuntu

2 Routers / WiFi (Linux)

1 Win2K server

Instead of 3,000 (6 users) or 6,500 (13 computers) the annual SW budget is probably mostly on Games for Nintendto DS, Sony PSP and PS2.

About €60 p.a. on Domain Names and < €100 on hosting to run the websites (with MySQL etc).

Unless you have redundant fibre and no cap you can't consider Cloud. Even then it's complementary not a replacement.

I only use gmail and Google Docs for those other online people that insist on collaborating via it. I can do all of that on my own secured hosting without Google reading it.

For really private collaboration we have VPN and our own server.

Little detail..

AFAIK the economic crisis was also entirely built on data models. Unless you very accurately know what you're doing with data you can spectacularly screw up as well - small mistakes make big differences in large models (cascade failures, my favourite, but then I always liked domino).

Sample: Google has missed the fact that privacy is slowly making a comeback now the incentive to keep people at war has disappeared (the money has gone and political leadership is changing).

If I then also see that Google is trying to predict human behaviour I suspect that someone needs to be told that (a) Hari Seldon was a FICTIONAL figure (Isaac Asimov Foundation series) and (b) he had BENIGN motives - Google just makes money and doesn't even do anything (and I mean ANYthing) charitable with it AFAIK (I'd be delighted to be corrected on the latter).

There, fixed it for you

Inside Google, profit drives 'everything'

@"Do no evil"

This do no evil sales pitch phrase is nothing but a manipulative two faced sales pitch that has always sounded suspect. These days, the more I hear it, the worse it sounds. For me Google showed their true colors when Google CEO Eric Schmidt said only miscreants worry about net privacy. e.g.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/07/schmidt_on_privacy/

There has always been very good reasons for privacy. Not least to avoid the state having so much data on peoples lives that government meddling busybodies (and outright control freaks) can make peoples lives an utter nightmare with relentless exploitation of people and interference with their lives.

Google's greed for information, in other words, their goal of "organizing the world's data" is indistinguishable from the creation of Big Brother. Google want to be on and in everything. For example, Google are already working GPS location based mobile phone searching that tracks our position via GPS. They will even know what our voice sounds like, from their Google voice recognition research. Both of these technologies are already working now. Google has already demonstrated both of them.

So considering where we are going even short term, imagine how much further Google can go long term with moves towards ever smarter and more specific data mining, plus being tied into ever more of our lives.

Big Brother is evil not because it knows everything, but because of the power it gives a minority of people at the expense of everyone else. Knowledge is power, but only a source of power for people who have access to the knowledge. Its the asymmetry of Big Brother total information access that gives so much power. Google are on course to become the most powerful company in history.

Can't we all just Google

"Why is Google the most important intelligence collection system ?"

If quite a few people do this, their automated data-analysis will surely make them a red face. I think that's worth it.

Why is Google the most important intelligence collection system ?

Open source intelligence (OSINT) is a form of intelligence collection management that involves finding, selecting, and acquiring information from publicly available sources and analyzing it to produce actionable intelligence. In the intelligence community (IC), the term "open" refers to overt, publicly available sources (as opposed to covert or classified sources); it is not related to open-source software or public intelligence.

http://www.e-datapro.net