Google makes use of quantum computing for better revenue-generating web search algorithms
The speed of web search depends primarily on the efficiency of the algorithms. Next, the hardware processor determines the speed of data processing. Development of the classical computers is, however, running towards its limitation due to the fact that, at certain size and below, the rules for classical electronics do not apply anymore. Thus, the size of the computing chips cannot be smaller than certain limit, and, thus, the efficiency of the web search is limited if we keep using the classical computers. Quantum computers, on the other hand, have an incomparable potential for accelerating the speed of web search. The idea of quantum computing, which was firstly proposed by several quantum physicists in 1980’s, is based on the quantum superposition of states. The classical bits, usually realized by high/low voltage, can only have either 0 or 1 for their values. In contrast, the quantum bits, so-called “qubits”, can be 0, 1 or any simultaneous superposition of those two, which are realized by an isolated, coherent quantum two level system. In short, a qubit has a greater capacity of information than that of a classical bit, which enables us to dramatically increase the efficiency of parallel computing through new algorithms with qubits.
Web search algorithms are nothing but tons of parallel computations. For example, the PageRank update algorithm, which is introduced in Networks, Crowds, and Markets by David Easley and Jon Klienberg, is just repetition of the same update rules for millions of pages. In this sense, the quantum computing becomes a powerful tool to reduce the computation time. MIT technology review reports a research result that the quantum algorithms shows faster computing performance than the classical counterpart does. In the research paper, Google in a Quantum Network (http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.2079, 2011), the authors claim that quantum PageRank algorithm is realizable and faster than the classical PageRank algorithm. Considering these current reports from academic world, we find it pretty natural that Google actually starts to introduce quantum computing techniques in its web search development. Last year, Google decided to invest to the representative quantum computer company, D-wave. Furthermore, Google began to make a team to construct its own quantum chips under collaboration with a research team in UC Santa Barbara. Although everything is now in a starting stage, it seems that Google’s decision will generate a promising outcome in the improvement of its web search and advertisement techniques.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1112.2079v2.pdf
http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/03/google-quantum-computing/
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/426348/quantum-pagerank-algorithm-outperforms-classical-version/