Michael Specht

We all know Google is a tough place to interview for, a bit like Microsoft. I came across this old post detailing two questions asked during an interview at Google, provides some interesting insight into Google as an organisation. The questions were:-

1. You have been shrunk down to the size of a nickel and tossed into a blender. You are told that the blender blades will start in 60 seconds.What would you do to save your life?

2. Design and describe a system/application that will most efficiently produce a report of the top 1 million Google search requests.These are the particulars.

* You are given 12 servers to work with. They are all dual-processor machines with 4Gb of RAM, 4×400GB hard drives and networked together.(Basically, nothing more than high-end PC’s)

* The log data has already been cleaned for you. It consists of 100 Billion log lines, broken down into 12 320 GB files of 40-byte search terms per line.

* You can use only custom written applications or available free open-source software.

How would you go? What is also interesting are the comments left on the post.

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