Kevin Harrison

I gotta say, when they said they were going to revolutionize the browser today, i thought to myself what could they possibly do to opera that would make me want to use it? There can be nothing of actual use aside from the novelty of using something aside from firefox.

Oh boy, was I wrong.

Opera might actually have something, something huge. Apparently, the folks at Opera have been working tirelessly even though they are 5th in browser penetration.

Opera has integrated an actual webserver into their browser which has never been done before.

A user can configure the unite service from their browser. It's rather straight forward. Simply enable the Unite service from Opera then right click on any application that you would like to use and click start service. Currently they have a Fridge service, where users can leave little notes on a virtual fridge in the form of a virtual post-it. Along with the fridge, they have a lounge, where people can have a chat, a webserver where people can view a personal web page, and then there is basic file sharing.

The file sharing is broken into three different categories, Photo Sharing, File Sharing and a Media Player.

Talk about an easy way for everyone to share their creations.

Incase anyone is wondering what the server version is of the unite service, the webserver responds as...

200 OK
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:46:30 UTC
Server: Opera/ubuntu.kharri1073.operaunite.com
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Client-Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:46:30 GMT
Client-Peer: 213.236.208.34:80
Client-Response-Num: 1
Set-Cookie: unite-session-id=9b4736b661f85d9025507f3a; Max-Age=2073600; path=/

Leave me a message on my fridge... http://ubuntu.kharri1073.operaunite.com/fridge/

Google finally revealed to the public what their servers are like on the inside. Surprisingly, from a technology standpoint, their servers are using x86 chips with a mixture of AMD and Intel chips. I guess from Google's perspective, they would rather have quantity over quality. Not that x86 chips are bad but with x86-64 available, x86 systems are the most cost effective.

Attached to each Gigabyte GA-9IVDP (The motherboard's model number might actually be GA-91VDP I can't say if it is a 1 or a capital i) motherboard are two hard drives, which look to be Hitachi Deskstars, eight chips of memory, maximum of 4 gigs each server since the operating system is x86, and a 12 volt battery as their own Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS).

Google explains that designing their servers with their own UPS battery is more efficient then having ten on one single UPS. Pretty interesting...

The real question with the hardware is whether or not Google's servers actually use the same exact parts. Do they know something most of us don't know about the reliability of Hitachi Deskstars? Or how about the Magnetek Power supplies? Perhaps it's time to dig up some stats for this hardware. Thanks cnet for the info.

Originally posted in 2006 or 2007, I can't remember.

I have been seeing a lot about this "new" web server that Google has been running. Well, I guess it's not that new. Its been around for about a year or so now however it's new to me. I'm wondering if this is ever going to be released to anyone outside of Google. Did they have worries about using an open source web server that everyone else on the internet can use? Were their programmers bored and figured they would tweak apache 'a little bit?'

My feelings about the GWS, Google Web Server is that Google loves to tweak things. They have custom MySQL databases, and perhaps i should also say "MySQL" with a pinch of salt with all their custom tweaks to allow their servers to squeak out every megahertz possible. And I'm fairly certain this is another instance where they began using Apache but tweak after tweak it slowly began a life of its own.

I'm not sure to be honest, and checking around other sites, there aren't many conversations going on about the Google web server.

I'd imagine there's more to follow for Google's in-house Web Server...