Google's Invisibility Cloak
forbes.com
forbes.com
"Google employees not using the secret OS are employing various versions of Unix, such as Linux or Ubuntu, and some older operating systems, like X11, he says." rolls eyes
imagine if the kernel had a low level "job manager," which could split up processes and dynamically run parts on their infrastructure; effectively a "map" operation. then, all parts of the process would be merged when results are returned from google and the components executed locally are completed; effectively a "reduce" operation. assuming a constant connection to google's infrastructure isn't insane for, say, fixed desktops (business users, anyone?). file storage could be run remotely, on GFS, which is highly available and highly redundant (and massive for cheap). you could run "big data" problems on individual employees' machines, since everything is partially "run in the cloud" as needed. and, if the data store is GFS, there would be basically no latency to the compute nodes.
there are just so many cool things google is set up to do for a future OS, and this article made me think.
Seriously though, people have been speculating about a google OS for years and years, and there hasn't been a shred of credible evidence. A far more likely reason for concealing the User-Agent string would be that those computers are running development versions of Chrome, perhaps on Mac/Linux, don't you think?
Linus did a very, very good job for the single isolated box. A kernel that had very deep ties to a greater infrastructure, a true internet computer, though, would have a huge value proposition for a lot of users, especially in business. I guess this thread could have been better titled, "Challenge HN: Extend the Linux kernel to do low level process splitting and handle a remote file system natively, to have the computer run partially on a distributed infrastructure as needed." I'd be amazed if Google aren't the ones to do this. If they aren't, though, we'll be welcoming some new names to the computing billionaires' club in the next few years.
Actually, no. Linus solved a much harder problem, the social problem of "freeing" a platform. Technology - not so much, but that's okay because lots of other people had done that.