Google is a web company, and it rakes in most of its money from online ad sales, but it has another identity that few people understand: It’s also a massive hardware maker.
For years, the company has designed the servers, networking gear, and perhaps other hardware that helps drive its many web services. Google is pretty secretive about its hardware work — the company sees it as a competitive advantage — but at
Google’s annual stockholder meeting Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette actually spelled it out. He called his company “probably” one of the world’s largest hardware makers.
