Coding Horror: Google Hardware circa 1999

May 29, 2005

Google Hardware circa 1999

The always entertaining Dan linked to something I hadn't seen before-- an archived page of the Google server hardware circa 1999:

Here it is in all its, uh, glory. I don't know what's more impressive, the two dual Pentium II 300 servers, or the 90gb SCSI drive array made from Duplo blocks. Here's a summary of all the systems listed on that page:

2-proc Pentium II 300mhz, 512mb, five 9gb drives
2-proc Pentium II 300mhz, 512mb, four 9gb drives
4-proc PPC 604 333mhz, 512mb, eight 9gb drives
2-proc UltraSparc II 200mhz, 256mb, three 9gb drives, six 4gb drives
Disk expansion, eight 9gb drives
Disk expansion, ten 9gb drives

That's a total of:

1792 megabytes of memory
366 gigabytes of disk storage
2933 megahertz in 10 CPUs

Humble beginnings, indeed. I'm trying to remember the first time I used Google, and I think it had to be sometime in 2000. This motley bunch of hardware grew to own the internet in a little more than five years. That's incredible.

Posted by Jeff Atwood View blog reactions

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Comments

Weird coincidence: that mousepad on the table looks *exactly* like a crazy blue/red liquid filled mousepad with a white background that I had. I recently found it sitting forgotten under magazines, and just threw it out before I moved.

I used to collect weird mousepads, and I had never seen one quite like that before.

Jeff Atwood on May 30, 2005 1:04 AM

Here's the official google history page, which documents the timeline more authoritatively:

http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html

Jeff Atwood on September 30, 2005 1:38 PM

Wow, Google sucked back then and little has changed! Screw google, it sucks and always has

Darganot on November 1, 2006 3:45 PM

How so, Darganot? How exactly does it suck?

dunbar on November 4, 2006 9:47 AM

Because Darganot wishes he had thought of the idea himself and made money from it first, dunbar.

Resentment is a powerful little bitch.

Adri on November 4, 2006 9:52 AM

The first time I used Google was when I noticed AltaVista had links to other search engines, and Google was one of them.

Zoba on November 4, 2006 12:08 PM

I visited Alta Vista the other day, wow, not much has changed.

dirtymouse on November 4, 2006 3:13 PM

that computer setup is still up from what i understand and serves as the backbone for the main splash page at google.

w00zy on November 4, 2006 4:29 PM

Excellent. I love stuff like this: even though I'll probably never achieve anywhere near what Sergey and Larry have, it's encouraging to think that it's possible. Nice post.

chess h on November 4, 2006 5:26 PM

Darganot,
Just because you got rejected by Google doesn't mean you should have any resentment against awesome Google. I'm sorry but maybe your less than average IQ will get you into Yoohoo or MS. AH HAHAHAHA!!!

jack daniels on November 4, 2006 10:13 PM

If it scales, it's OK to start small.

Fred on November 5, 2006 12:14 AM

You decided to estimate processor performance by adding up the megahertz?

I hope you feel ashamed.

Michael Heinz on November 5, 2006 4:00 AM

Excellent! I love this kind of thing.

Peter Rees on November 5, 2006 1:30 PM

Our company is at the same stage right now and hopefully it'll become one of the " Google"s

Umma on November 6, 2006 5:57 PM

Just looks like any other university lab of the era - amazing what thoughts and a bit of equipment can turn in to! Also interesting to note that when the internet wasn't up to much, it didn't take much equipment to make it a whole lot better!

Doug on November 21, 2006 8:46 PM

"You decided to estimate processor performance by adding up the megahertz?"

No one said anything about estimating... Take it easy.

On topic: This is great stuff, but from what I remember back then that hardware would have been pretty expensive, especially anything dual- or quad-core. Memory is lacking though even for the time :p

ryan on March 13, 2007 10:09 PM

More pictures, including closeups, of the early Google hardware in the above picture:

http://backrub.tjtech.org/May1998/hardware.htm

Complete early Google archive:

http://backrub.tjtech.org/index.htm

Jeff Atwood on March 23, 2007 11:23 PM

Isn't America the best place iin the world to live? Two guys with a shoe string budget take a few towers and make millions. It just goes to show you can get a piece of the pie still, if you are willing to work at it an have a little luck, My hat's off to you guys.

Russell on January 3, 2008 9:16 AM

Does anybody know how to combine all that hardware into a sigle box? How do they do it?

Stanley on March 7, 2008 9:27 PM

Now we know Google is trying to take over the internet. They own and run most things on the web now and someone needs to stop them. Thanks for the blog entry.

Robert Wooller on March 17, 2008 5:17 PM

Darganot,

Little retard.

asd on April 13, 2008 4:30 AM