Although Google is the most popular Web-based search engine used by everybody, not many know that it’s one of the biggest supporters of open source. For more on Google’s association with open source, here’s the story.
In January 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both students at Stanford University, began working on a search engine, which came to be called Google and took the world by storm. Initially, Page and Brin extensively used open source software such as Linux and GCC, internally. One of the reasons for using open source was, perhaps, the cost savings. However, the power that open source offered them—the ability to study and customise the source code to their preference—played a bigger role.
The creators of Google used free software wherever possible, even for corporate processes like accounting, record-keeping, etc. The use of free software for Google’s systems continues till date, with nearly all of its servers running on Linux. Page and Brin also used free software libraries such as OpenSSL, zlib, PCRE and MySQL. Since Google depended extensively on free software, its creators felt obliged to contribute to the various open source projects that had led to Google’s success.
If the software improves, everyone benefits, including Google. So, why keep the in-house fixes and improvements to the code a secret? Click Here for more....
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