We use cloud computing every day without realizing it.
When you sit at your PC and type a query into Google, the computer on your desk is no more than a messenger. The words you type are swiftly shuttled over the net to one of Google’s hundreds of thousands of clustered PCs, which dig out your results and send them promptly back to you.
When you do a Google search, your answers might be done by a computer sitting in California, Dublin, Tokyo, or Beijing.
Email used to be sent and received using a program on your PC. But web-based services like Hotmail came along and carried email off into the cloud. Now we’re all used to the idea that emails can be stored and processed through a server in some remote part of the world.
Preparing documents over the Net is a newer example of cloud computing. Simply log on to a web-based service like Google Documents and create a document, spreadsheet, presentation, or whatever you like using Web-based software.
No longer using Microsoft Word or OpenOffice on your computer, you’re using similar software running on a PC at one of Google’s world-wide data centers.
