1. Technologies of Google Seminar Week 1
Old Dominion University
Department of Computer Science
CS 791/891 Spring 2007
Michael L. Nelson
1/10/07

2. Purpose of This Class
We will examine the technologies that Google has created or adopted in the process of becoming the company they are today
All papers (with few exceptions) were (co)authored by present (or future) Google Employees and collaborators
this covers only public material about Google’s algorithms, applications and infrastructure
some of the papers were written ~10 years ago -- keep the proper historical context in mind when reading

3. Class Format In groups of 2, each group will: read 2 assigned papers
prepare a minute presentation on the paper
lead a class discussion on the material presented
presenters will prepare at least 3 questions for the class in advance

4. Warning: Tough Papers Ahead!
These papers can be tough reading. They are research papers that assume detailed knowledge about their specific application areas.
You have all semester to read two papers and prepare your presentations!
You have the help of a teammate
You have the help of the rest of the class
you will likely have to understand the papers presented by other students to understand your assigned papers
feel free to ask your fellow students questions; collaboration is encouraged

5. This is a Seminar Class!
You will have to self-teach the background material for these papers
I will assist to a limited extent, but seminars are about self-learning
To learn your paper, you will likely need to read other papers or web resources
start early!
Each group will give a dry-run of their presentations approximately 1 week before the presentations are due
normally, the Friday before the presentations are to be made, but check w/ the instructor

6. Grading Paper presentations + class participation = 100% of your grade
If you have only a superficial understanding of the material, your grade will suffer at the instructor’s discretion
group members can get different grades if the contributions are not equal
Attendance is required!
if you’re not here, you’re not participating
I will occasionally take role; if you’re not here you will lose 1 letter grade for each absence unless prior arrangements are made

7. Plagiarism is an Honor Code Violation
What is plagiarism?
It is ok to use material from other resources found on the web, but:
you must cite any and all work that is not your own
unattributed slides, graphs, sentences etc. is plagiarism!
at least 75% of your material needs to be your own
e.g. ,if you have 30 slides, then the content of 22 of those slides must be in your own words and/or figures! The other 10 slides must cite where the material comes from
If you’re not sure, ask the instructor.

8. Administrivia Important URLs Class homepage: Email list:
Class homepage:
Readings are posted -- start now
Check your when your presentation is scheduled
list:
sign yourself up
use the list to ask questions of the class

9. What We Will Learn This Semester
A deep understanding of various technologies employed by Google, including:
their early contributions of crawling & ranking
information retrieval problems at web-scale
the specialized hardware and software infrastructure created specifically by/for Google
How to read, understand and present research papers
deep understanding of concepts requires one to go beyond a Wikipedia-level understanding
you don’t truly understand something until you know it well enough to explain it to others
How to read about a new topic and self-teach the necessary background knowledge
in real life, the problem you face today does not always build on the skills you learned yesterday