Google's technology

The technology behind Google's great results

As a Google user, you're familiar with the speed and accuracy of a Google search. How exactly does Google manage to find the right results for every query as quickly as it does? The heart of Google's search technology is PigeonRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University.

Building upon the breakthrough work of B. F. Skinner, Page and Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms. And while Google has dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of our service on a daily basis, PigeonRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web 

Why Google's patented PigeonRank™ works so well

PigeonRank's success relies primarily on the superior trainability of the domestic pigeon (Columba livia) and its unique capacity to recognize objects regardless of spatial orientation. The common gray pigeon can easily distinguish among items displaying only the minutest differences, an ability that enables it to select relevant web sites from among thousands of similar pages.

By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings.

When a search query is submitted to Google, it is routed to a data coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. When a relevant result is observed by one of the pigeons in the cluster, it strikes a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases. Those pages receiving the most pecks, are returned at the top of the user's results page with the other results displayed in pecking order

Why Google's patented PigeonRank™ works so well
PigeonRank's success relies primarily on the superior trainability of the domestic pigeon (Columba livia) and its unique capacity to recognize objects regardless of spatial orientation. The common gray pigeon can easily distinguish among items displaying only the minutest differences, an ability that enables it to select relevant web sites from among thousands of similar pages.
By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings.
When a search query is submitted to Google, it is routed to a data coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. When a relevant result is observed by one of the pigeons in the cluster, it strikes a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases. Those pages receiving the most pecks, are returned at the top of the user's results page with the other results displayed in pecking order.
Integrity
Google's pigeon-driven methods make tampering with our results extremely difficult. While some unscrupulous websites have tried to boost their ranking by including images on their pages of bread crumbs, bird seed and parrots posing seductively in resplendent plumage, Google's PigeonRank technology cannot be deceived by these techniques. A Google search is an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with information relevant to your search.
Data
PigeonRank Frequently Asked Questions
How was PigeonRank developed?

The ease of training pigeons was documented early in the annals of science and fully explored by noted psychologist B.F. Skinner, who demonstrated that with only minor incentives, pigeons could be trained to execute complex tasks such asplaying ping pong, piloting bombs or revising the Abatements, Credits and Refunds section of the national tax code.

Brin and Page were the first to recognize that this adaptability could be harnessed through massively parallel pecking to solve complex problems, such as ordering large datasets or ordering pizza for large groups of engineers. Page and Brin experimented with numerous avian motivators before settling on a combination of linseed and flax (lin/ax) that not only offered superior performance, but could be gathered at no cost from nearby open space preserves. This open space lin/ax powers Google's operations to this day, and a visit to the data coop reveals pigeons happily pecking away at lin/ax kernels and seeds.

What are the challenges of operating so many pigeon clusters (PCs)?

Pigeons naturally operate in dense populations, as anyone holding a pack of peanuts in an urban plaza is aware. This compactability enables Google to pack enormous numbers of processors into small spaces, with rack after rack stacked up in our data coops. While this is optimal from the standpoint of space conservation and pigeon contentment, it does create issues during molting season, when large fans must be brought in to blow feathers out of the data coop. Removal of other pigeon byproducts was a greater challenge, until Page and Brin developed groundbreaking technology for converting poop to pixels, the tiny dots that make up a monitor's display. The clean white background of Google's home page is powered by this renewable process.

Aren't pigeons really stupid? How do they do this?

While no pigeon has actually been confirmed for a seat on the Supreme Court, pigeons are surprisingly adept at making instant judgments when confronted with difficult choices. This makes them suitable for any job requiring accurate and authoritative decision-making under pressure. Among the positions in which pigeons have served capably are replacement air traffic controllers, butterfly ballot counters and pro football referees during the "no-instant replay" years.

Where does Google get its pigeons? Some special breeding lab?

Google uses only low-cost, off-the-street pigeons for its clusters. Gathered from city parks and plazas by Google's pack of more than 50 Phds (Pigeon-harvesting dogs), the pigeons are given a quick orientation on web site relevance and assigned to an appropriate data coop.

Isn't it cruel to keep pigeons penned up in tiny data coops?

Google exceeds all international standards for the ethical treatment of its pigeon personnel. Not only are they given free range of the coop and its window ledges, special break rooms have been set up for their convenience. These rooms are stocked with an assortment of delectable seeds and grains and feature the finest in European statuary for roosting.

What's the future of pigeon computing?

Google continues to explore new applications for PigeonRank and affiliated technologies. One of the most promising projects in development involves harnessing millions of pigeons worldwide to work on complex scientific challenges. For the latest developments on Google's distributed cooing initiative, please consider signing up for our Google Friends newsletter.

Top 10 Tech Cars 2012

The internal combustion engine strikes back

When people dream about the future of driving, they picture hundreds of millions of cars humming almost imperceptibly on batteries or fuel cells, their power plants emitting water vapor or nothing. Rarely does petroleum fuel—and foul—the green fantasy.

But don’t let that vision distract you from reality. Although the world’s biggest automakers are determined to bring electrified cars to the masses, their real business—and the world’s business—will continue to revolve around the internal combustion engine for decades to come. The signs are accumulating: Morgan Stanley now projects that just 4.5 percent of new cars sold in 2025 will be EVs, sharply down from its previous estimate of 8.6 percent.

Yet change is afoot, change that heralds the remaking of the invention that first began to put the world on wheels about 120 years ago. Most notable over the past year has been the remarkable rise of the turbocharger, as makers from Motown to Munich have begun adopting turbocharging and even supercharging to radically downsize engines, boost fuel economy, and cut pollution—usually without sacrificing anything in power or drivability.

This year’s list shows turbocharging up and down the line, from a Japanese hatchback to a British supercar. Of course, the list has a few EVs and hybrids also; as always, our emphasis is on interesting new technology, not just the market share that it commands for now.

MCLAREN MP4-12C
Now with carbon fiber!

As I coax the McLaren MP4-12C eastward along Route 301 in New York’s Hudson Valley, the tall gates of the Chuang Yen monastery loom, then disappear in a flash. To the monks inside, I’m a silvery, shrieking blur.

They might not agree (and I’m sorry if I busted up their meditation), but the McLaren’s essential nature rings in tune with this Buddhist temple. For all its Formula One credentials, for all its flashy virility and hair-trigger handling, the McLaren also sets a new supercar standard for inner peace.

For the MP4-12C, McLaren refused to accept traditional trade-offs between performance and comfort, and that’s what makes this model the year’s most intriguing new sports car. The company owes its achievement—and its position in this year’s Top 10 list—to its democratization of a weight-saving technology that had been limited to the ultrarich: carbon-fiber construction.

Here “democratization” means that it’s now affordable for the merely rich. The starting price of US $231 400 is by far the lowest of any car ever draped on a carbon-fiber structure. And while you could buy 10 Hyundai Sonatas for that price, recent breakthroughs have McLaren—along with mega-automakers such as BMW—confident that large carbon‑fiber components will eventually trickle down to mass-market cars.

McLaren’s bona fides here are unmatched. The company built and raced the first carbon-fiber Formula One monocoque back in 1981. Every McLaren since has been carbon-fiber intensive, including the MP4/4 racers driven by Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, which won an unparalleled 15 of 16 Formula One races in 1988. By 1992, the legendary three-seat, $1 million McLaren F1 became the first road-going car with a carbon-based chassis.

Until recently, woven sheets of carbon fiber had to be laid up by hand in a mold, impregnated with resin, then cured for hours in an autoclave oven. It was a black art. Back in 1992, building just the F1’s “tub,” which surrounds the driver, took 3000 hours. By 2004, the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren had chopped that to 400 hours.

For the MP4-12C, McLaren adapted a process called resin transfer molding, which cuts fabrication time by 99 percent. Bundled fibers are stuffed into a huge mold, epoxy resin is injected, and heat and pressure do the rest. The one-piece tub, called a MonoCell, takes a mere 4 hours to build and weighs 75 kilograms, less than many passengers.

Such strong, lightweight bones are key to the new car’s remarkable structural rigidity and agile yet compliant suspension. The entire car weighs 1301 kg, nearly 80 kg less than its main competitor, the Ferrari 458 Italia. The hollow carbon structure forms a “safety survival cell” akin to that of an F1 car, with aluminum crumple zones in front and in the rear that are easy to replace.

That light weight also means low emissions: The McLaren produces less than 300 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer driven, topping its class. Because the shell resists twisting so well, the suspension can be optimized to provide the best possible ride and handling. And carbon fiber is more resistant to fatigue than metal. So the McLaren will, in theory anyway, feel as tight and new in 10 years as it does the day it leaves the showroom. A compact 441-kilowatt (592-horsepower), twin-turbocharged 3.8-liter V-8 lies smack dab in the car’s center of gravity. Add a seamless seven-speed, dual-clutch automated manual transmission and the McLaren casually puts up supercar numbers: 0 to 97 kilometers per hour (0 to 60 miles per hour) in 3 seconds and a top speed of 330 km/h (205 mph).

Dihedral doors do without old-fashioned door handles: Sweep a hand along a sensor and the doors pivot upward with one-finger ease; the doors open less widely than conventional ones.

The cockpit is designed for a fast driver and a stupefied passenger, not for downloading reruns of “The Office.” There’s not a single button on the steering wheel, which is flanked by a pair of paddle shifters, whose action is a little stiff for my taste; McLaren says an adjustment may be in the works.

Yet although interfaces are simple, the technology below is anything but. And the tour de force is the ProActive Chassis Control system, which does away with conventional shock absorbers and heavy antiroll bars.

Instead, the McLaren’s body motions and ride stiffness are controlled entirely through hydraulics, within a series of linked, pressurized cylinders at each corner of the vehicle. Imagine water being sloshed around the floor of a boat as it heaves and pitches and you’ll have an idea of how it works.

The system works by sending fluid from front to back or from side to side, in a fraction of a second. Set the system to Normal and the McLaren trundles over potholes as obligingly as a luxury sport sedan. And unlike some cars with adaptive systems, the McLaren undergoes a serious Jekyll-to-Hyde personality change when you crank up its settings: In Track mode, body-roll stiffness is doubled, gearshifts are eye-blink fast, and the special Aero mode lifts the rear wing slightly for increased downforce at exhilarating speeds. That wing also acts as an air brake, shooting upward to clamp down the rear under hard braking, countering the car’s forward weight shift to allow the rear brakes to apply a greater share of force.

From public roads in New York to a twisty racing circuit in Fontana, Calif., the McLaren made a convincing case for inclusion in any supercar smackdown: Its body stayed almost eerily flat at speeds that would have had a Porsche 911 leaning over and its tires howling.

This may seem strange to say of a car that only the select few can possibly afford, but the MP4-12C is a wonderful deal: It delivers seven-figure technology at a six-figure price

Robots in Disguise: The Rise of the Car OS

The idea of intelligent cars is not a new one. Screenwriters have been playing with the notion of cars that can talk, steer themselves ,,,,,,

The idea of intelligent cars is not a new one. Screenwriters have been playing with the notion of cars that can talk, steer themselves and include all sorts of wild gadgets for decades. With the rapid growth of mobile technology, though, is a smart car really just a cinematic fantasy? According to the recently unveiled Project Detroit car, designed by Microsoft and the crew at West Coast Customs, the answer is no.

Many cars already utilize advanced technological components that would have seemed like science fiction a half a century ago. Cars run on biofuels and electricity, “heads-up” window displays project essential vehicle information, like gas gauge and speed. The revelation of Project Detroit, though, serves as a model of how more modern advances could play into a vehicle’s design, making it more functional and more fun.

What if the same technology that allows a driver too see the car’s speed and gas level on the windshield allowed the person riding shotgun to play Xbox Live from the passenger seat? Project Detroit shows that it’s possible. The passenger seat gaming system is one of the many ways in which Microsoft integrated their current technology into the concept car. See this video: Car OS.

On the flip side of the 2012 Ford Mustang used for Project Detroit, the rear windshield adjusts to display movies or games when the car is stopped parked, and contains a messaging system to display customized text when the car is in motion. Most of the car’s components are controlled by a smart phone, which can also be used to locate or unlock the car remotely.

A vehicle with the extensive technology loaded into Project Detroit probably won’t be on the market, or within the budget of most consumers, in the near future, but plenty of technological advances are already making their way to standard makes and models. Perhaps the most essential technological upgrades are those that make the car’s functionality more efficient and lessen the vehicle’s environmental impact.

Aside from electricity and biofuel, vehicles have been manufactured that can run on natural gas and solar power. Some vehicle manufacturers are stepping up efforts to design vehicles that can use these alternative energy forms.

Along with alternative forms of energy, fuel management systems, which monitor fuel usage in a vehicle, help drivers get more miles per gallon, which will become increasingly important as oil reserves diminish and gas prices rise. This technology is already in use by shipping companies to keep operational costs down, but can serve the same purpose of saving money and resources in consumer vehicles, as well.

BlueTooth technology has already made many vehicles hands-free, but more and more manufacturers are incorporating controls for mobile devices, including phones and MP3 players, on vehicle steering wheels for safer, more efficient control of devices while driving

So, even if the vehicles coming down the line in the next few years are unlikely to come equipped with projection screens, some aspects of Microsoft’s design – like built-in 4G WiFi and customized horn tones – may not be all that futuristic.

Car Computers And Our Relationship To Them

The news media is always telling us about the problems with home and commercial computers getting hacked into. The release of viruses and other techniques to steal our key strokes and learn more about us seems to be a daily reminder of how susceptible we are to intrusions.  But what about the computers in our cars? Are they open to assault from someone wanting to disable us on the road and is it always a hacking issue?First, we have to understand that car computers do more then they did even a couple of years ago. Automobile manufacturers have developed systems that “interface” with everything from climate control to brake systems. These same vehicles have to have diagnostics completed, instead of simple tune-ups when they go in for their 3,000 megabit…err mile…check-up. The computer connections made are with one computer in your car connecting with another at the service center. This opens up a new avenue of information being passed back and forth.Then there are connections when considering car systems have hook-ups related to driving, Electronic Throttle for instance, that opens up a network correspondence. Does this all mean something sinister? Scientists from universities in California and Washington did a study a couple of years ago that stated, “…they were able to remotely control braking and other functions in the cars they used in their tests, and argue that the car industry is at risk of making the same security mistakes as the PC industry.” It would seem that opportunity does exist for culprits to initiate hacking into today’s cars.Another point to be mindful of is that car computers involve software. Sometimes a glitch can cause an issue that may be as simple as “rebooting” the system involved. The computer companies that work with Ford, GM and the other auto makers are constantly at work to upgrade the software to keep the problem from re-occurring.On the upside to this situation is that a vehicle moving along is harder to be hit then a sitting vehicle. The links that exist for handling throttle operations, and other systems, are working on the idea that constant communication will maintain a constant sync. That is harder to control then a home PC or laptop. This whole idea of connectivity from an outside source is called telematics (to be looked at in depth in a later post). Onstar, and other constants that focus on some aspect of the driving condition, is an example of telematics. There are many levels involved the working operations of telematics; from the point of origin to the aspect of the vehicle being monitored and handled. That hierarchy of involvement means that many safety considerations are constantly at play to limit interference for car safety and operation.

Technology is in everything we do. With all of this comes the possibility of something, or someone, trying to disrupt the technology. But it should not stop us from moving forward and simply realize there are people striving to lessen the negative considerations of our driving experience.