Google

I've been telling people, and writing in this blog, that a friend of mine invented the PC farm. I have not asked my friend if he agrees with my view, I should, after all, he did it, not me.

It was the early 1990s. I was at the Autonomous University of Puebla. A friend of mine, Arturo Fernández Téllez, had spent a year as a postdoc at Fermilab, in Batavia, IL. Arturo brought the Internet to our campus. Our University was very likely one of the first in the state to have an Internet connection: and with it, he brought Augusto B. D'Oliveira, a Brazilian physicist to work with us.

Then I went to spend my sabbatical year, in 1994 at the Physics Department, of this fine research institution. When I was there I was pleasantly surprised to find two friends from UCSB, Don Summers, and Umeshwar P. Joshi. Don was part of the experiment I joined, E-791.

The problem had been, before I got there, to record and analyze the biggest charm quark data set ever produced. For this gargantuan task, brains started to strategize to get a supercomputer of new design. Don thought of the cheapest solution that he still uses in the UMiss Physics Department; the UMiss HEP Computer "Farm".

Don wanted to make data, not money.

Larry Page, and Sergey Brin, wanted to make money with data. I wonder if they even know about Don?

Now Google wants to buy big lots in Mountain View, and the neighbors are not happy.

So it goes.