A redundant array of low cost computers

I'm not sure, but Yahoo could have been there first with their platform, which was huge clusters of BSD powered machines certainly eight years ago if not ten. A data-centric system with lots of parallel processing is the answer for any search engine, and getting the maximum amount of performance out of commonplace hardware seems to be the best way to get value for money. Google's approach has been pragmatic and revolutionary. Have a search for Google Filesystem, which is an entirely inhouse solution for the distributed storage of large amounts of data in a massively redundant way. This and the Googleplex are far more interesting to the engineering geek than the front end's voracious hoovering up of IP, and will probably be as important in the company's future development.