Google's Secret Weapon: Python (in part)

Redmondmag.com has a good article on Google's extensive use of Python as part of its larger user of open source systems in general. As Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation observes:

[Google is] an example of a company that literally couldn't have existed in the same form pre-Linux or pre-open source...If they had to rely on Microsoft or Sun, not only would it have been too expensive, they could not have done the modifications necessary to create their services.

And the language they use extensively is our own Python. It therefore comes as no surprise that the creator of Python, Guido von Rossum, was recruited to work there.