Google (GOOG) indicated in the later part of 2009 that it would be releasing its next-generation search infrastructure “Caffeine” just after the New Year, but as yet there are no signs of the mysterious indexing system overhaul. Google’s search team has indicated though that it has already deployed.

After testing in November in a public sandbox, it was stated that Caffeine would be rolled out to a single data center for use on the company’s live search engine. The new indexing system according to Google, will slowly be released into the public, who should not be able to see any noticeable differences in search results.

Google stated that it will not be changing its search algorithms, but changing the way the company builds its index of all known websites and the metadata needed to describe them - the index that the algorithms rely on. Caffeine also includes an overhaul of the company’s distributed Google File System which was created almost 10 years ago. Google File System Two is a much needed advancement that uses not only distributed slaves, but distributed masters as well.