What out Intel- there’s a new sheriff in town. Well, at least there will be, so long as all of Google’s hopes and dreams go according to plan…
…Which they tend to do; the tech mogul has no issue expanding its markets past the search engine its so known for and into smartphones, cars, and now… even computer chips. Google makes high-tech companies like Facebook look like a start-up.
Since when? Well, we’re not even sure that it’s going to happen yet. There’s something going on according to Bloomberg, which reported that google would somehow have some kind of presence at Qualcomm HQ, in front of Qualcom stockholders, and it would offer some kind of “stamp of approval” for a new kind of Qualcomm chip. But then Google didn’t show up.
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By the way, about the whole autonomous Google Car thing… The federal government agency responsible for regulating traffic safety and making driving safety standards just reported that Google’s autonomous car driving software could be seen as a driver in their L4 vehicles, which don’t have steering wheels, brakes, or any form of transmission. L4 vehicles are engineered expressly for older people and children, so that they can be transported safely from place to place without a human driver spending the time or money to have them transported, and without the human error that puts so many drivers and pedestrians at risk.
But back to the chips: Qualcomm is the largest smartphone chip maker in the world, but apparently this iffy agreement wasn’t about smartphone chips. It was more about chips for computer servers, which are the machines that offer all the services an emails and other data to you phone using the Internet. Considering Google is the world’s largest Internet company, the idea of them getting into the server chip industry is definitely a big one. Yet, they weren’t there eon that day which many believed would be oh-so-fateful.
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So what is Google’s current relationship with server chips? Well, in order to offer services like search, Gmail, and Maps to millions of people around the world, Google has to operate a network of data centers that are located everyone where from Oregon to Finland to Taiwan and back. Google tries engineers to custom design the many thousands of servers that drive these computing hives, and they have o buy chips for these servers directly for the companies that make them. That means Google spends a fortune on chips from Intel, which is, of course, the largest chip provider in the world and in fact was founded by the co-creator of the world’s first computer chip. According to Intel higher-up Diane Bryant, Google buys more server chips from Intel than all but five companies in the world.
That seems about right, until you realize that everyone else on the list of server chip buyers actually sells servers, like Dell and HP. Google has to buy all those chips just for the servers it makes for itself. So if Google switches from Intel to Qualcomm, the entire tech economy is going to know about it. We’ll just have to wait and see.
