BigTable is a massively scalable database and it is what Google uses for over 60 of their own applications including Google Maps and Orkut.
BigTable allows Google to have a very small incremental cost for new services and expanded computing power (they don't have to buy a license for every machine, for example). BigTable is built atop their other services, specifically GFS, Scheduler, Lock Service, and MapReduce.This is a huge move from Google that I hope we see more of in the near future... is an EC2 clone on the way?
