Just had lunch with Douglas who works on Microsoft Max, a very exciting entry into the photo sharing space. Douglas and I met via Flickr by way of mutual comments months ago and only realized we both worked at Microsoft when, two weeks ago, we recognized one another—from our Flickr photos, no less—at the Crossroads Mall food court. Small world! Douglas has also maintained a personal web site and various web presences for many years, much like myself. Of course, I was never nominated for a Webby.

Old (April 2004) but interesting blog post that touches on Google’s architecture and scale. Much good data in the comments. Tidbits:

• Google operates 100,000 servers
• Measure a large scale application’s (service’s) effectiveness in terms of costs per CPU cycle
• Cool opening to the conclusion: “Google is a company that has built a single very large, customer computer.”