How Google Uses Data to Make a Better Google

Making sense of vast amounts of data is made easier through processor improvements, faster networks and a growing amount of cloud storage capacity, but there’s another factor that’s accelerating the ability to sift through information: user communities.

At the Structure Big Data event, Alfred Spector, a VP of Research and Special Initiatives at Google, illustrated how to combine low-level user data with the massive information stores and cloud computing services offered by his company. Perhaps the most prominent example is Google’s geographic data used both in both the Google Maps and Earth products. The company harvests global information to create useful products in their own right, but each can be supplemented through localized user data. A modern data management web app makes it easy for Google to host, manage, allow collaboration and publication of data tables or personalized maps.