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Google Compute, Google searches for things to work on, to help further the development of science. Its for the good of humanity. Its only 15mb of ram.

The biggest recipient is Folding@Home. They are trying to understand how a protien "folds". The mathmatical calculations are so large, that it would take a moden quad processor Intel Itanium processor, a long time to finish adding it up. I've heard it could take a whole century.
So programmers developed a way to speed up the process, they would release a screen saver that would add up a small part of the math, on a users home PC. It would only take up a small amount of of the users CPU and RAM, but would help. It has ended up being the same as having nearly a thousand PCs crunching numbers.

Folding@Home has one that can be setup to run only when the CPU is not in use, and to turn itslef off while your gaming, or doing something else hardware intensive.

F@H is only one of the many projects that benefit. To aid the other projects, you would have to find, and download their software. With Google Compute you can help many of them, with just one program.

It helps research projects get answers faster, that would normally take decades on the systems within their budget. Projects that could lead to curing cancer, or HIV/Aids. Or other serious issues in the world.

I downloaded and installed the F@H software quite some time ago. I felt it was the right thing to do. Some of these projects have competitions, you join a team, and it tracks how much work you've done, as well as how much your team has done.