I have heard that Google keeps several "generations" of search results available, and rolls them out across servers in a circular fashion. So getting different search results may be caused by hitting different servers with different "as of" dates, rather than by Google dropping records during sorts.
-- Jack Hamilton Management Information & Analysis - Analytic Information Services Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. 1950 Franklin Street, Oakland, California 94612 +1 510 987-1556 (KP tieline 8-427-1556) NOTE: This email document and attachments are covered by CA Evidence Code §1157 and CA Health and Safety Code §1370. NOTICE TO RECIPIENT: If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are prohibited from sharing, copying, or otherwise using or disclosing its contents. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail and permanently delete this e-mail and any attachments without reading, forwarding or saving them. Thank you. Howard Brazee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> 11/24/2008 07:58 AM Please respond to IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> To [email protected] cc Subject Re: [IBM-MAIN] Little OT but its worth the 20+ minutes to watch it On 23 Nov 2008 21:27:02 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ed Gould) wrote: >I was astounded to see that Google now claims to sort 6 petabytes in a few hours. This is astounding. I bet Frank Yeager would be interested in this, I know we could never come close to this in the mainframe world. I am in complete awe of this. It is not clear exactly what they are sorting unfortunately but if it is even half true the sort on the mainframe may be passed its prime and showing its age. Google has some different requirements, which may or may not have a bearing on this result - dropped records are not unacceptable, for instance. When you do a search going through one machine you are likely to find different results than when you do a search going through another machine. It works for them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
