Google's Spanner: Database Tech That Can Scan the Planet

Google's Spanner: Database Tech That Can Scan the Planet

Data centers: the often-forgotten, yet utterly important behind-the-scenesters of the web. Applications like your email account, calendar and — admit it — YouTube collection of One Direction videos are all kept afloat by them.

Google's newest creation, Spanner, is a data center that can be distributed and replicated across the world. As Google explains it, it's "the first system to distribute data at global scale and support externally-consistent distributed transactions."

SEE ALSO: Revealed: Google's Secretive Data Centers [VIDEO]

In less jargon-y terms: Applications that use the system, like your calendar or Gmail, will be able to read data at a much faster rate.

Watch the video above for a closer look at Spanner. And tell us what you think about it in the comments section below!