Inside Google

Doug Zongker

Google, Inc

Abstract

Search is one of the most important applications used on the Internet, but it also poses some of the most interesting challenges in computer science. Providing high-quality search requires understanding across a wide range of computer science disciplines, from lower-level systems issues like computer architecture and distributed systems to applied areas like information retrieval, machine learning, data mining, and user interface design. In this talk I will describe some of the challenges in these areas, discuss some of the interesting applications related to search that Google has developed over the past few years, and I will highlight some of the behind-the-scenes pieces of infrastructure that we have built in order to operate Google's services. Along the way, I will share some interesting observations derived from Google's web data.

Biography

Doug Zongker joined Google in 2003 and is currently a Senior Software Engineer working on Gmail. Prior to joining Google, he received a PhD from the University of Washington working with David Salesin in computer graphics. He received his B.S. degree in computer science from Michigan State