Google computing power explored

One function, Map reduce, allows easy parallelisation of large programs:
http://www.usenix.org/events/osdi04/tech/dean.html

Video of Google explaining itself
Papers on Google techniques

Their computational power looks accessible by their programmers
slide 5
from slideshow

Alternate takes:
news.com coverage
internet news coverage

GFS (Google file system):
GFS video
gfs paper