The humble Still believes none of what Google does is gospel and is sure there are other "equally valid" ways of doing keeping systems in check.

"If you've only got six machines then the answer might be to spend $100,000 per machine but if you are going to build apps based on whitebox hardware then you have to assume that hardware is going to fail reasonably regularly," he said.

The exact number of servers used by Google is kept under wraps but speculation puts the total number in the tens to hundreds of thousands.

"Generally you architect things, even smaller internal corporate apps, so that when things fail the app stays up," Still said.