Opening Up Google

Google exerts its fascination in part because it so opaque. A quintessential Web 2.0 company, owner of Blogger, it also has few outward-facing blogs - and none really worth reading. So any insights into what makes the company tick are always welcome, especially when many of them hinge on software issues, as they do in this Information Week piece.

This is particularly interesting because much of the code that makes Google tick is open source. Surprisingly, this turns out to mesh with that desire for opaqueness rather well:

In fact, one of the things Google likes about open source software is that it facilitates secrecy. "If we had to go and buy software licenses, or code licenses, based on seats, people would absolutely know what the Google infrastructure looks like," DiBona says. "The use of open source software, that's one more way we can control our destiny."