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Google Spans Entire Planet With GPS-Powered Database
BY CADE METZ
Three years ago, a top Google engineer named Vijay Gill was asked what he would do if someone gave him a magic wand.
At the time, Gill helped run the massive network of data centers that underpins Google’s online empire, and he was sitting on stage at a conference in downtown San Francisco, discussing the unique challenges facing this globe-spanning operation. Jonathan Heilger — the man who oversaw Facebook’s data centers — sat a few seats away, and it was Heiliger who asked Gill what he would add to Google’s data centers if he had a magic wand.
Gill hesitated before answering. And when he did answer, he was coy. But he seemed to say he would use that magic wand to build a single system that could automatically and instantly juggle information across all of Google’s data centers. Then he indicated that Google had already built one. “How do you manage the system and optimize it on a global level?” he said. “That is the interesting part.”
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/09/google-spanner/
