In exciting, but not unexpected news, Google has has put its name behind the brainchild of three of their in-house genius programmers. But it's not a web app, nor is it an enterprise solution -- it's not even a downloadable tool like their Chrome browser. They've actually gone and invented a new language. It's called Go. (That's their mascot, the Go-Gopher, over on the right.)

Citing difficulties with existing languages and arbitrary restrictions that prevent them from making the Google services as good as they could be... they did the only really sensible thing they could do: they made their own superior language. To put it into simple terms: imagine trying to communicate with grunts and squeals. That's how Google feels with today's languages, and why they've made their own one. It's why we speak English today, rather than Tarzan Talk.

And in true Google style, they've done it right. Go is fast. It's secure. They even go as far as to call it 'fun' on their homepage!

I don't want to bore you with specifications -- they're all there on their site if you're a developer and want to get going immediately (it's open source, of course!) -- but I will tell you that this is big, big news.

We haven't seen a new systems-oriented language for over a decade. Technology has moved on a lot. Heck, Google themselves have pushed the requirements of computer systems. When you're trying to build a system that scales to hundreds of thousands -- or millions -- of servers, it's no surprise that existing languages don't quite hit the spot.

Say they're only squeezing 40% of the max theoretical output from their server farm. If Go could push that utilization up to 60 or 70%... imagine the gains! For them, for us! This is even good news for the environment!

Of course, it's free to download and use, and there are tutorials that are very easy to get started with. There's even a little video showcasing just how fast it is, after the break.