I’ve previously speculated whether those running the mega-datacenters that deliver more and more of our applications–especially in the consumer space–might not also increasingly write their own platform software and construct their own hardware. In the general case, the jury is still out. And there are some counterexamples. For instance, Yahoo has largely shifted from running a FreeBSD variant that it supported internally to the commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution.

But, however the general trend plays out, it’s clear that Google is increasingly going its own way. It already extensively customizes Linux and other open-source software for its internal use. Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center, among others, has been critical of what he sees as Google’s relatively stingy contributions back to open-source projects in general. And although Google doesn’t design its own processors, it does source custom motherboards from Intel that it uses to build many of its own servers.

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen two more stories–one in hardware, one in software–that further highlight Google’s increasingly vertical integration. Read more »

Posted by Stephen Shankland

A mainstream Fujitsu 2.5-inch hard drive for mobile or compact PCs

(Credit: Fujitsu)

Fujitsu has squeezed a notch more capacity into its 2.5-inch, 5,400rpm mobile drives, announcing its MHZ2 BH family with a maximum capacity of 320GB on Tuesday.

The family is designed for use in mobile or compact PCs and in consumer electronics products. It also features 8MB of buffer, a 3 gigabit-per-second SATA interface, and power consumption of 1.9 watts when reading or writing data.

The new drive will be available in February; Fujitsu didn’t release pricing. The earlier MHY2 BH line topped out at 250GB and had a slower 1.5Gbps SATA (serial ATA) interface.

Tags: SONY, Internet, COMPUTER, PROGRAMMING

Posted by Michael Kanellos

REDWOOD CITY, Calif–Will Nintendo try to turn its Wii console into a platform for delivering movies and other content to consumers? The company is experimenting with it.

The company has created a service in Japan that lets consumers get TV listings via the Wii, Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, said at the Dow Jones Consumer Technology Innovations Conference taking place here this week.

Nintendo went forward with the project because a TV Guide Network-like service similar to what Nintendo is offering didn’t exist. (TV in Japan is notoriously weird: in the past, PCs and TVs had to be fitted with an array of tuners to get all channels).

There are no plans to bring something like this to the United States at the moment, he said, but Nintendo is always looking around. “There are other channel opportunities,” he said. “They may look like games. They may not look like games.”

Fils-Aime was quite less vague when it came to talking about why the Wii console and DS handheld are doing well. One reason, of course, is that Nintendo is reaching out to a wider variety of consumers than the other guys. Read more »

Tags: HARDWARE, APPLE, SONY, Intel