Google's Engineering Process

At Google, python is one of the 3 "official languages" alongside with C++ and Java. Official here means that Googlers are allowed to deploy these languages to production services. (Internally Google people use many technologies including PHP, C#, Ruby and Perl). Python is well suited to the engineering process at Google. The typical project at Google has a small team (3 people) and a short duration (3 months). After a project is completed developers may move to other projects. Larger projects are sub-divided into 3 month deliverables, and teams get to choose their own language for their project. Engineers are given their 20% time to work on what they want to at Google. Many new ideas spring from this 20% work, and "bottom up" seems to be the mantra at Google.

(From http://panela.blog-city.com/python_at_google_greg_stein__sdforum.htm)