

Google is Working on its own router - VonGuard
http://www.sdtimes.com/blog/post/2009/01/05/Google-To-Doom-Juniper.aspx
Google never liked Cisco. Now they've gone sour on Juniper. They've decided to do it themselves.
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icey
Does this seriously make sense for them to do? To me it seems like they're
acquiring a terrible case of NIH syndrome.

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prakash
It makes a lot of sense. Goog has been using Juniper for a while, so goog
really understand the problem domain and what % of that problem is solved by
Juniper's products.

They would also know what they like & dis-like in terms of features their
product should have vs. juniper which probably address a wider customer wish
list; maybe & I am speculating here, Juniper takes a long time to turn around
on features or some features are custom to goog and Juniper doesn't want to
build them.

So goog gets to design a product that fits their needs for the next few years.
If the product turns out well there might even be tremendous competitive
advantage since googs competitors can't buy it.

Worst case things don't work out and they go back to buying Juniper.

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gaius
The odds that Google has the best _whatever_ engineers in the world diminishes
as _whatever_ gets further and further from search and advertising. Are they
going to be designing their own processors? Fabbing them? DEC is the last
company I can think of that was fully vertically integrated, even Apple isn't.

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flashgordon
Vint Cerf is already under Google's patronage. I am pretty sure TCP/IP is not
exactly Google's "core" business! No matter how far the "whatever" is, it is
clearly helping and supporting search and advertising.

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skorgu
I idly wonder how much IPv6 google runs internally and if this has any bearing
on this story.

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snprbob86
Why run IPvAnything when you have highly reliable fiber that you don't have to
share? There is so much unnecessary overhead...

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andreyf
Which is precisely why they might want to build their own routers...

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VonGuard
Frankly, I think they just needed to build some hardware that could handle
their loads without choking. Preferential treatment be damned. There simply
isn't hardware powerful or reliable enough for their needs. Or, conversely,
there is such hardware but it costs $10 million a box.

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lallysingh
There's a lot of smarter application-level stuff you can do, the closer it is
to how you run your systems internally. Considering how large/deep their stuff
is, they can really blur the line between application processor & router.

Personally I've been drooling over this baby:
<http://www.xilinx.com/products/virtex5/txt.htm>

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gsmaverick
It was going to happen eventually just like with everything else they use at
the googleplex!

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sspencer
Interesting idea. I wonder if they will be preferential to Google packets!

Between that and all the dark fiber Big G is waiting to light up, one wonders
about those rumors of Google wanting to own your entire Internet experience.

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litewulf
Google is a pretty strong proponent of net neutrality.

The router will probably be preferential to Google packets, though, in the
sense I assume these routers are for Google datacenters and not for other
people to buy and stick in their house...

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flashgordon
I am wondering if Google may decide to (truly) open the router OS?

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marketer
There are already open-source router firmwares, it wouldn't make much sense
for Google to try this. One of the well-known ones is XORP:
<http://www.xorp.org/>

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zandorg
Yeah, my guess is it looks domains up on Google.com, and points to the Google
cache...

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known
Why shooting around the bush (Chrome, Router etc)

Just roll-out GTCP/GIP

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b0ib0t
I hate google. Eff em. I use <http://search.isc.org/en/> and if that fails
<http://search.wikia.com/>.

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wildwood
hmmm... the text gets fainter and fainter the more a post is down-modded, but
the urls stay just as dark as any text. Is that deliberate, or a bug?
Shouldn't the urls fade out, too?

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andreyf
Since it makes the URL's stand out, certainly a bug, thinks I.

