CNet has a great article on Google’s data centers. Some aspects of it were quite surprising. It really shows off the side of Google that I admire greatly, the same things that I admire about Sun and Microsoft, but which is increasingly marginalized at Google, unfortunately.
J.Ja
It appears that YouTube is using Silverlight instead of Flash video for March Madness. That’s awesome news for netbook owners and lower end computers because Silverlight is so much more CPU friendly than Flash video. Now if YouTube will convert the rest of the site over, at least for all of the 720P content, that would make the site so much more friendly because flash 720P simply chokes on lower end computers such as netbooks.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2067&tag=nl.e589
This is the exact same kind of exploit that Chrome got hit with too on its release. And like Chrome, the problem was in an open source package which was fixed, but Google didn’t update to the latest version. Google is used to being able to seed a patch in their server farm and POOF all users are patched. If Google doesn’t learn (and quickly) to be secure on their client apps, the game will be over before they get going. These types of problems certainly are not going to help them win any corporate users. In comparison, Microsoft’s track record over the last year or two looks great.
J.Ja
This link to Google Video (WARNING – NSFW Not Safe For Work images) seems like it’s been hijacked in some way by a foreign language site. I accidentally came across it when I was looking at some LCD monitor review videos on Google Video. I someone doubt that Google approves of the content and the avatar image and I sent in a complaint to Google but the page and profile hasn’t been removed yet. I’m not sure what to make of it or what, if any, exploits are involved.