Hadoop, a free software program, is making it easier and cheaper than ever Google, Yahoo, and others to analyze and access the unprecedented volumes of data churned out by the Internet.

By mapping information spread across thousands of cheap computers and by creating an easier means for writing analytical queries, engineers no longer have to solve a grand computer science challenge every time they want to dig into data. Instead, they simply ask a question.

Three top engineers from Google, Yahoo and Facebook, along with a former executive from Oracle, announced a start-up Monday called Cloudera that will try to bring Hadoop’s capabilities to industries as far afield as genomics, retailing and finance.