Rivals back internet research lab Options

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Arch-rivals Google and Microsoft are collaborating to fund research that aims to make the net easier to run.

Along with Sun Microsystems, the companies are contributing to the $7.5m (£4.25m) running costs of the Reliable, Adaptive and Distributed Systems Lab.

A five-year project at UC Berkeley, the new lab will aim to create software that automates the admin systems for web services and e-commerce sites.

Any software created by the lab's students will be given away freely.

Machine only

Using a technique known as statistical learning the Rad Systems Lab will try to automate many day-to-day administration jobs.

Google, Microsoft and Sun are contributing to the lab because all three have enormous data operations that currently demand huge numbers of people to keep running.

The development of the software powering these huge operations typically takes place in a very haphazard fashion. The lab aims to replace the patched up programs with more formally tested software that does the same job with far less human oversight.

By making it easy to set up and run web-wide services, the lab also hopes to remove the technology barriers that prevent new competitors taking on giants such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Amazon.

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Source: BBC News