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Is Google building a hulking floating data center in SF Bay?
- joshdance 13y agoI hope it is a floating data center. If not, it is a fun detective type article.
- aluhut 13y agoBruce Sterling will love this.
- narfquat 13y agoSeems pretty telling to me, with the patent and coffee shop cashier testimonial. I wonder how the hardware will hold up to the environmental harshnesses of the open water? Or even just sea spray...
- mark212 13y agoI thought that was the best part: corp spends tens of thousands in lawyer time and craftiness to be stealthy, but forgets that it gives corp-branded charge cards to its employees, who won't spend $3.50 on a latte while on company time (and forget to ditch their badges when offsite).
- lstamour 13y agoReminds me of the fake Apple company names and back stories when they were building the iPhone and had to meet with cellular companies. (I guess Steve Jobs was less recognizable back then?)
- numbsafari 13y agoSomething similar is being outfitted in Portland, ME. http://www.pressherald.com/news/Clues_emerging_about_mystery_structure_on_barge_in_harbor_.html?searchterm=barge http://www.pressherald.com/news/Clues_emerging_about_mystery... The OP is a much better article (The Press Herald is garbage). My original guess for the barge-building in Portland was a ocean-based prison facility for the government to use for interrogations. But it's seeming like the floating data center idea is much more likely.
- mjolk 13y agoThis is somewhat of a tangent, but how is the tech scene in Portland, ME? It's my hometown and I've had thoughts at various times about returning and setting up shop.
- numbsafari 13y agoIt really depends on what you want to do. If you want to raise capital and build a startup here, don't. Or, at least, do so but with your "real" headquarters in Boston, NY or CA. There's a strong effort to try and get things going, but there's a definite lack of capital and the capital you can find in other places will send you a consistent message: "We don't want you in Maine, move here instead." There are some opportunities around maritime businesses (logistics, mostly) and lots of incentives for trying to build small manufacturing and renewable energy businesses... but the school closest to Portland is looking to close its physics department and the state officials responsible for managing the incentive programs have proven multiple times that they cannot be trusted to develop long-term programs. If you have or can develop a remote-work type position, it's a great place to live and work from (as long as you can get good, reliable bandwidth). But if you want to start a software-focused startup ... honestly ... it's an uphill battle.
- mjolk 13y agoFor reference: I spent the first 20 years of my life in Maine. >If you want to raise capital and build a startup here, don't. Or, at least, do so but with your "real" headquarters in Boston, NY or CA. Ah, yeah. I'm in NYC now. I figured that if I started something in Maine, I'd be on the Noreaster on a semi-regular basis. I wouldn't be looking for an angel investor and would be bootstrapping instead. >but the school closest to Portland is looking to close its physics department Physics isn't Comp Sci, but I get your point. USM was my first school before transferring, so ouch. >If you have or can develop a remote-work type position, it's a great place to live and work from (as long as you can get good, reliable bandwidth). That's sort of what I'm thinking for at least a few years. I'd be looking to buy a place on the West End and then start my own shop when it's reasonably paid down (3-5 years). >But if you want to start a software-focused startup ... honestly ... it's an uphill battle. Thank you for the thoughtful response. It definitely helped me put some things back into perspective.
- cargo8 13y agoVery interesting... Any chance that this will mean the Govt can't subpoena data from this data center if it is floating far enough from the US coast? Or does it not matter because clearly the US will be the closest harbor?
- Pirate-of-SV 13y agoOn international waters you follow the laws of the country where the ship is registered.
- Luc 13y agoSo, most likely Liberian or Panamanian law...
- seanherron 13y agoFrom the pictures, it looks like the ship is registered in the US (though that could change once it is finished).
- warfangle 13y agoIn international waters, it matters more which flag your ship is sailing under than which port is closest.
- us0r 13y agoIf you are doing business in the US you will play their rules.
- enjo 13y agoIt has to connect to the U.S. somehow. So they can still subpeona data moving through the switch. There's going to be a cable connecting this to the mainland, which one could argue means the ship is moored to the U.S. coastline? Might be a fun legal battle.
- duaneb 13y ago
- acr25 13y agoIt might be a NON-HULKING floating data center.
- nostromo 13y agoI was Googling to find what a boat-based wave-powered generator would look like, and I found this interesting diagram: http://www.greenpatentblog.com/2011/12/08/fraunhofers-mobile-wave-energy-harvester-barges-in/ http://www.greenpatentblog.com/2011/12/08/fraunhofers-mobile...
- trafficlight 13y agoThat seems... very inefficient. But I don't know enough to argue it.
- tlarkworthy 13y agoI don't think wave power is deployed successfully yet[1]. The cooling would not be a leap of technology though. [1] Its under development http://www.pelamiswave.com/ http://www.pelamiswave.com/ but I don't think its finished yet.
- nostromo 13y agoYeah, that's why I was trying to figure out how they would power it. Diesel generators seem... unGoogley.
- tlarkworthy 13y agoPlug it in to the mains? I don't think you want tons of servers in the middle of the ocean. How would you get the data out without fibres anyway?
- DanBC 13y agoWith your Google Blimps?
- pilsetnieks 13y agoWhy would you want it to be in the middle of the ocean? Keep it close the the coast, perhaps hook into a cable landing station (where submarine comm cables come ashore.) Running a submarine power cable also doesn't seem too far-fetched.
- acl2149 13y agoGoogle uses Treasure Island for holiday parties, perhaps that's what explains the presence of employees?
- joezydeco 13y agoHow does the data get to/from the platform? Microwaves? Can that work from a slightly moving platform? My wacky guess would have been off-shore offices for employees that can't get H1Bs.
- us0r 13y agoHow does data get from the EU to the US? Or APAC to the US?
- joezydeco 13y agoLast I checked, all those entities were firmly connected to the Earth's crust.
- ISL 13y agoI'd guess fiber-optic cable.
- WalterSear 13y agoI doubt it; they would have just bought a cruise ship. Besides, Tata and Wipro have demonstrated that you can just bring people here to work, coop them 8 to a suite in extended stay hotel rooms, and with sufficient lawyering and a couple of hoops, visas be damned.
- raverbashing 13y agoWait, what? I think I missed this one
- petercooper 13y ago1000 4G dongles could pull down 1 Tbps and the signals run well over several miles of water.
- otterley 13y agoWireless communication doesn't work that way. Its bandwidth is not proportional to the number of transceivers.
- apaprocki 13y agoThere are actually 4 "vessels". Look at the names -- using binary :) BAL0001 BY AND LARGE LLC * * C & C MARINE & REPAIR LLC 2010 Freight Barge 2164.0 249.6 BAL0010 BY AND LARGE LLC * * C & C MARINE 2011 Passenger Barge (Inspected) 2520.0 260.1 BAL0011 BY AND LARGE LLC * * C & C MARINE 2011 Passenger Barge (Inspected) 2520.0 260.1 BAL0100 BY AND LARGE LLC * * C & C MARINE 2012 Freight Barge 2164.0 249.6
- vanni 13y agoHypothesis found in comments on OP website: BY AND LARGE = Brin sergeY AND LARry paGE?
- joezydeco 13y agoFYI, "Buy N Large" was the fictional Costco-like store from Pixar's WALL-E.
- chc 13y agoI kind of doubt that these two names are related except that they both derive from the same common idiom.
- ZeroGravitas 13y agoAlso "by and large" is a nautical term meaning (roughly) "whether sailing against the wind or sailing with the wind".
- twelvechairs 13y agoand a common phrase (though a little less used than in previous generations) meaning 'generally'
- zissou 13y agoConfirmed about the generational decline: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=by+and+large&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=by+and+large&y...
- seanv 13y agoanother cool thing about floating data centers in california is they're pretty much earthquake proof... built in shock absorbers (aka water). You can probably charge a premium for easily accessible highly secure data I would imagine. ... assuming megalodon isn't still around
- VikingCoder 13y agoAn earthquake can cause a tsunami. Depending on conditions, the tsunami wave could be hundreds of feet high. So, not earthquake "proof."
- jmillikin 13y agoTsunamis are not giant walls of water like what you see in disaster movies. They're more like an unending tide: the water just keeps rising until it floods the area. Anything floating loose on the water at the time is at risk of being carried inland, but is unlikely to be completely destroyed. A floating data center barge anchored a mile offshore is as close as you can get to tsunami-proof. At worst, its connection to the mainland would be severed if the tsunami destroyed the local land-based telecom infrastructure. Any data located on the barge would still be intact until communications could be restored.
- 14113 13y agoHence why they're also sometimes called "Tidal waves"
- 205guy 13y agoNo more Hollywood movies for you. The only "tsunamis" with "waves" hundreds of feet high are created by cliffs or glaciers collapsing. And even then, the wave height is really the run-up against another cliff or mountain. Such waves can be dangerous to boats in confined waters, such as a bay. In the open ocean, tsunami waves are mostly harmless and even barely noticeable to boats. And all this is moot because the slip-strike motion of the San Andreas fault doesn't produce tsunamis that I've heard of.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- fibbery 13y agoGreat article. It's nice to see journalists do actual investigative work, even if it is for something like this. Today's "journalism" seems to be all link-bait opinion pieces mixed in with copy-pastes from twitter.
- dmix 13y agoAgreed I'm just as much impressed with the level of investigative work done here as with the actual data center. Well done CNET.
- nraynaud 13y agoI was thinking exactly the converse: why so much effort for gossip? It's pure tech celebrity gossip in my opinion and brings nothing to the party. Why not spend some more effort on the link between google and NSA? We still don't know how they steal our data.
- dannyr 13y agoI've seen hundreds of report regarding the link between Google & NSA. Isn't that enough? This is just not gossip. It's not about Sergey Brin's love affair. This is about a piece of technology that is possibly built by Google.
- smackfu 13y agoYou have a very broad definition of gossip.
- duaneb 13y ago> We still don't know how they steal our data. Actually it feels to me like they're stealing it anyway they can... so if there is a legal recourse, I think it's safe to assume they've taken it, along with many illegal ones.
- jameshart 13y agoDon't you think that one of the interesting issues raised by a floating data center might be a jurisdictional one? Is it possible that google is actually considering putting some of their infrastructure beyond sovereign control? Maybe this isn't just gossip...
- xd 13y agoHow do you get a patent for a "floating data center"..
- comrade_ogilvy 13y agoWho has jurisdiction?
- theorique 13y agoSubmit it to USPTO and other national or trans-national (e.g. EU) patent registries like any other patent. This one's included in the article: https://www.google.com/patents/US7525207 https://www.google.com/patents/US7525207
- xd 13y agoSatire aside. My point was the ridiculousness of it. What's next, patents covering putting data centers in space, under the sea or under stairs etc..
- BrandonY 13y agoThis is precisely how Feynman got the patents on the nuclear submarine and the nuclear airplane.
- theorique 13y agoLooks like the patent disclosure refers extensively to challenges and opportunities of the maritime environment - power generation, heating and cooling, etc.
- 8_hours_ago 13y agoThere's a Chinese patent on putting a data center in space [0], and a US patent for a partially submerged data center [1], but I can't find anything for putting a data center under the stairs... you should patent it! [0] https://www.google.com/patents/CN103186179A?cl=en https://www.google.com/patents/CN103186179A?cl=en [1] https://www.google.com/patents/US20130044426 https://www.google.com/patents/US20130044426
- justanother 13y agoMy first thought: "Finally I'm interested in applying at Google, if it involves using my captain's license!" My second thought: "Meh, the job interview probably involves writing a breadth-first search algorithm to search for known pirates in the graph of nearby ports."
- Johnie 13y agoNo, you mapreduce the Pirate search. Send out 100 workers to check on the nearby ports and see which ones come back. You need to think at Google scale.
- pilsetnieks 13y agoOr you can be sneaky. Put out some irresistable, yet covert job offers for pirates in the necessary ports, and see where the applications come from.
- yeukhon 13y agoJust send in 100 journalists and 99 of them will come back.
- Johnie 13y agoOr put a "Report a Pirate" bounty and crowdsource it.
- jyz 13y agobut how do you confirm the validity of the reports
- yk 13y agoThere are two types of reports, fraudulent ones and real ones. The fraudulent ones will come from everywhere, while the real reports come only from pirate infested harbors. Therefore just subtract the mean report density and what remains should be random fluctuations around zero plus the real reports. So if a harbor has more than some threshold of reports, then it is pirate invested.
- caycep 13y agoI can just see google hq now. "Boy that was quite a storm last night...oh wait...gmail just floated away and is halfway to hawai'i"
- musashibaka 13y agoSo it appears as though Google is looking towards a future where they are an independent country, or at the very least free from regulation, visa-a-vis Seasteading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading
- minwcnt5 13y agoAnd interestingly, Patri Friedman used to work at Google...
- jasonwatkinspdx 13y agoPatri only worked on prediction markets at google, so far as I know, and left to spend more time on Seasteading and related projects. Source: he's a friend of a family member.
- jedc 13y agoEveryone's work on prediction markets at Google was a 20% project, so Patri would have had his main job doing something else.
- ef4 13y agoConsistent with this, too: http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4334356/larry-page-wants-to-set-aside-a-part-of-the-world-for-experimentation http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4334356/larry-page-wants-t...
- hristov 13y agoNo, this does not appear at all. It appears they want to save on real estate and cooling costs by having floating data centers. Google has owns so much real estate and immovable property in the US it is silly to suppose they are thinking of leaving the country just because they built a couple of barges.
- raverbashing 13y ago
- DanBC 13y agoI hope they fit it with sub-surface portholes and webcams. The article keeps saying "huge", but really that's tiny for a ship. Google could buy an old cruise liner and fit several of those inside. Or maybe Google is going to buy more little ships and plonk one of these in each? I hope that they have adequate security, because all that gold and copper is worth stealing for some people.
- nraynaud 13y agoI guess they'd better make the first one not too ambitious and ramp up later.
- cpeterso 13y agoIt's still in beta.
- bigiain 13y agoSo it'll get deployed, a bunch of people and startups will come to rely on it, then the guy who's driving this as his "20% project" will get moved to another group, and it'll sit un-maintained for several years slowly rotting, then sink without a trace…
- hnriot 13y agoI see. we're slashdot now.
- sneak 13y agoWell, actually* it was Stack Exchange that first identified the poison that is metadiscussion. * tongue firmly in cheek as I knowigly contribute to the problem in the hopes of educating everyone away from it
- yk 13y agoI think they will use a RAIS [0] design. [0] Redundant Array of Inexpensive Ships
- mrb 13y agoWith movable data centers, Google can easily move them across oceans, as popularity and usage of different Google services inevitably shifts across countries over time, in order to be closer to wherever their users are to reduce network latency. For example an "Orkut data center" would have been very useful to Google in 2008, when they announced they were moving its operations to Brazil because somewhat unpredictably this is where their core user base developed the most: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut
- dlib 13y agoThey would also be able to move operations to places where energy is cheaper or sea water temperature is cooler. In general, it could be used to minimize costs looking at a variety of factors. I'm still curious how they will connect to the mainland. A fibre connection would hamper the flexibility of having a boat. Employees would rather live on the mainland than on a boat. So perhaps they the boat is stationary and will enjoy the ample amount of cooling water and potential energy the waves create.
- Swannie 13y agoOr you could just shift the processes to a newly commissioned, and therefore cheaper per cpu/ram/storage per dollar!
- tux 13y agoThis floating data centers could be used for more privacy/security. Very interesting article thanks.
- cakeface 13y agoI am having great mental images of pirate ships full of hackers attacking Google floating data centers in international waters. The floating data centers will of course be stoutly defended by a combination of machine gun wielding robots and Google engineers with laser beam interfaces for their Google Glass.
- peterwwillis 13y agoCan somebody explain the point behind the secrecy? What does Google have to gain by taking all these steps to hide they're the ones building it?
- narfquat 13y agoPerhaps corporate espionage/sabotage? Or maybe to keep things relatively low-key around the site. Or perhaps the tech/approach is untested, and they want to do some preliminary tests/dry runs before putting their branding all over it. These security measures are pretty tame in the grand scheme of things though. I think if google did want to completely mask their involvement, they would have at least issued different badges and credit cards to their employees on site.
- jyap 13y agoThe same reason anyone hides trade secrets. For competitive advantage, etc... Perhaps also for legal reasons. For example larger companies use shell companies for purposes of reduced liability.
- gojomo 13y agoSo that the reveal can be done on their own timing, only when things are ready, for maximum desired effect. Trickling details out about something still taking shape leads to expectation problems, and perhaps less favorable coverage (in magnitude and tone) at intended launch time.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> Can somebody explain the point behind the secrecy? What does Google have to gain by taking all these steps to hide they're the ones building it? It's too big to hide the fact that someone is doing something, so by making obvious efforts to keep it secret, they prompt people to look into it, find clues that its tied back to Google, and give more press to the effort than it would have gotten if Google had issued a press release about building floating data centers.
- hristov 13y agoI think these will probably get floated somewhere within the bay, and they will probably ruin the bay views of some people. They have probably found a way to build them without going to public hearings and want to finish the job before the locals get wind of this and try to pass new laws to prevent their installation.
- blackjack48 13y agoMaybe Google will put pressure on the city to upgrade the island's power grid, which has had serious reliability issues in recent years: http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/treasure-island-endures-yet-another-power-outage/Content?oid=2540870 http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/treasure-island-endur...
- qwerta 13y agoReminds me [1]. Gmail like AI breaks loose and uses fully automated floating data centers. Highly recommend. [1] book named "Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears:
- nandhp 13y agoThat sounds like the game "Endgame:Singularity": http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/ http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/
- chromaton 13y agoIt's being built at the same hangar where they shot the Battlebots TV shows.
- dharbin 13y agoSomebody told them about docker and this is what they did....
- wikwocket 13y ago> putting data centers inside shipping containers is already a well-established practice. Is this true? Does anyone know why? The article seems to assume it without saying why.
- Jtsummers 13y agoI'll try to find the link in a moment, but Microsoft was doing something like this 5+ years back. The premise was similar to Google using commodity hardware in their datacenters. Throw together "compute blocks", set them all up and when performance degrades sufficiently you remove the container and install a new one in its place. EDIT: Also, I'm surprised I got the time right, for some reason 2005-2012 is one big blur to me and I usually pick the wrong end of that range when guessing when things happened. It also seems that none of these articles mention what I recalled reading in articles years ago about just replacing a box once its performance degrades. I'm either misremembering or that ended up being a non-feature once fielded. http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/04/01/microsoft-embraces-data-center-containers/ http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/04/01/micro... A more recent article, this one is MS in VA: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/02/boydton/ http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/02/boydton/ A critique of the approach: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9080738/6_reasons_why_Microsoft_s_container_based_approach_to_data_centers_won_t_work http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9080738/6_reasons_why...
- joezydeco 13y agoOne of these Microsoft container centers is outside Chicago, near O'Hare Airport in Northlake: Satellite View: http://goo.gl/maps/2pX5u http://goo.gl/maps/2pX5u (Note the transformer farm right across the tollway) Containers being loaded: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt5ROTu6ceM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt5ROTu6ceM
- Jtsummers 13y agojoezydeco: Your reply seems to be dead, I'm not sure why. I think that's the same one the datacenterknowledge.com article I linked refers to though.
- 13y ago
- nickzoic 13y agoFinally, something with better bandwidth and worse latency than Andy Tanenbaum's station wagon. > Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Computer Networks, 4th ed., p. 91
- cookingrobot 13y agoMaybe this is just so their data centers can be movable between cities so they can negotiate better tax agreements and power contracts.
- walshemj 13y agoOr to cover peaks like say the Olympics just anchor it near to where it is needed.
- deeths 13y agoThe middle of the ocean could be a a very high margin location for IaaS hosting. Due to speed-of-light delays, some of the ideal locations for hosting high-speed trading arbitrages are in the middle of the ocean. Being half way between two exchanges would allow you to notice a small difference in price of some commodity in two different exchanges and buy and sell microseconds before your competitors on the mainland know that there's an arbitrage opportunity. See http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/action/stocktrade.cfm http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/action/stocktrade.cfm
- kordless 13y agoIf this actually worked, there would be boats sitting in the middle of the Atlantic and Pacific with computers on them. I have no idea if they are sitting there, but I'm pretty sure if it was an idea that worked, it would be done by now.
- jongala 13y agoJust guessing here, but the geographical advantage probably requires a fiber link, which seems prohibitive in open ocean. Putting your ship in the right place probably doesn't improve your latency if you have to bounce signals off of satellites.
- deeths 13y agoIt doesn't help if you need to use satellites, but you cloud use microwave. Microwave is line of sight, which would usually limit you to 40miles, but if you were to have a big blimp tethered to a big barge, then you can increase the line-of-sight distance.
- deeths 13y agoThat was my first thought, too. On the other hand there are probably cheaper ways to beat your competitors than crewing a boat, paying for fuel/electricity, havign a datacenter crew on board, dealing with the challenges of getting a high bandwidth signal hundred of miles off-shore, etc. Specifically you could invest in ever-faster custom processing in hardware or a lower latency connection will still make you faster than your competitors. You don't need to be as fast as possible, you only need to be a tiny bit faster than everyone else. On the other hand, if someone can take advantage of economy of scale (by being a neutral provider to many brokers) and provide an advantage over everyone at a lower cost than the above options, then everyone would need to use it to compete effectively.
- quink 13y agohttp://www.subpartners.net/cables/apx-east.html http://www.subpartners.net/cables/apx-east.html http://www.commsday.com/commsday-australasia/slatterys-radical-funding-plan-for-proposed-australia-singaporeus-cables http://www.commsday.com/commsday-australasia/slatterys-radic...
- vxxzy 13y agoCould this be an attempt to skirt the rules and laws imposed by the US on our (Google's) data? Would Google have to provide data under a warrant if said data is physically located in international waters?
- munin 13y agoif the ship is under US flag, yes
- Pxtl 13y agoA massive floating data-centre out in international waters would be a pretty powerful protection against governmental interference in your business. Well, except for the military kind.
- smacktoward 13y agoIt's been tried: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/03/sealand-and-havenco/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/03/sealand-and-haven...
- noir_lord 13y agoNot really. It's a similar idea but comparing Google putting it's resources behind a similar idea to something like Sealand is not really a fair comparison. The outcome could be vastly different.
- thrownaway2424 13y agoYeah that last part of your thought is the only important one. Nobody, _nobody_ has better undersea cabling tapping abilities than the NSA.
- noir_lord 13y agoAhem, (Unfortunately as a Brit) I think Tempora/GCHQ might be up there with the NSA.
- walshemj 13y agoActually it just struck me this might be part of Googles DR plan for California getting hit by the big one
- walshemj 13y agoActually it just struck me this might be part of Googles DR plan for California getting hit by the big one
- ffrryuu 13y agoA place for those with no visa to the USA to work!
- panhandlr 13y agoIt's startup/incubator space: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/off/4148978964.html http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/off/4148978964.html
- mulligan 13y ago.
- breischl 13y agoI believe this was literally Chapter 1 (ok, maybe chapter 2 or 3) of "Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears" [1]. Life imitates art, I guess? Or maybe that author is more prescient than I gave him credit for. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Avogadro-Corp-Singularity-Appears-ebook/dp/B006ACIMQQ http://www.amazon.com/Avogadro-Corp-Singularity-Appears-eboo...
- Udo 13y agoGoogle was granted a patent in 2009 for a floating data center Sigh, there is a patent on floating data centers? For fuck's sake...
- ctdonath 13y agoAnyone consider what the real estate & taxes savings will be with this? For high demand areas where you'd like to set up a data center, something offshore might save a fortune in land costs and property taxes alone.
- nikcub 13y agoIt likely can't be justified on power and real estate costs alone. There are counties in Oregon that give away land and provide very cheap hydro power for data centers.
- ctdonath 13y agoI was referring to areas where real estate is extremely expensive, and data demands warrant close proximity thereto - such as San Francisco. Floating a data center on "free" water surface may be cheaper yet still have thick short data pipes to intended customers.
- richardw 13y agoNever underestimate the bandwidth of a barge filled with hard drives.
- 6ren 13y agoInternational waters, immune to NSA? Also, does wave power really yield sufficient energy?
- natch 13y agoActual original reporting, wow, sadly unusual these days for any publication. My respect for CNET might be resurrected.
- wfunction 13y agoI wouldn't be surprised if it was a GoogleX project of some sort.
- Oculus 13y agoThis could be part of Google's Project Loon. Instead of building a data center in Africa why not ship one over.
- hardwaresofton 13y agoMaybe they're just trying to lay some underwater cable... to Japan
- randartie 13y agoIt's likely that this is a way to get around the visa limits the US is having. If you build a giant cruise ship and park it on the bay next to google then you can have engineers working near HQ without legally requiring them to have visas!
- ams6110 13y agoThe idea of a bunch of non-citizen engineers working (and living?) in a windowless floating cargo container doesn't seem to me to be something that would be a great idea, PR-wise.
- GuerraEarth 13y agohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/alison-winfield-burns/rich-and-busy-potentate-e_b_3951340.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alison-winfield-burns/rich-and...
- moonie1 13y agoCould this be a routing center for CC payments? That would be a very interesting tax evasion method...
- mcgwiz 13y agoJust enough leaks to conclude it's a Google-owned project. Although I can't offer an alternative explanation, I'm a bit skeptical in this post-Snowden world.
- Cthulhu_ 13y agoI can see it already. In a dystopian future, when the world as we know it is covered in water, one mythical ship traverses the oceans, powered by stratosphere kites or nuclear power. Nobody knows where it's from. All we know is that many years ago, it became sentient. And its name is Google.
- willvarfar 13y agoHow would a data centre on a barge cope with constant motion (hurtful for cheap spinning discs?) and data link latency? Presumably cable doesn't work well if the barge moves?
- mkhalil 13y agoWell looks like we're going to need to Trevor to do some investigation.
- erikj 13y agoSounds kinda like the fictional Arsenal Gear ship: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_%28weapon%29#Arsenal_Gear http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_%28weapon%29#Arsenal...
- bonemachine 13y agoJust wondering what the effect of all the waste heat will be on (what's left of) the Bay's ecosystem.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dspeyer 13y agoA datacenter in/near SF doesn't make much sense. Electricity there is just too expensive. And, no, the waves in the bay aren't a solution. I suppose you might build a datacenter there and then ship it to some third-world port where you don't want to do construction. While I love the idea of a gmail datacenter in international waters with automatic guns to deter boarders, that really wouldn't fit Google's current political strategy.
- mortdeus 13y agoThat or a metal gear. My hopes are on the latter.
- Newzduniya 13y agonice information regarding google building hulking floating data center.
- late2part 13y agoToday we went sailing. I took ~62 higher res jpg pictures of this area. You can see these here: http://tinyurl.com/floatingcontainers http://tinyurl.com/floatingcontainers
- freakyterrorist 13y agoAwesome Initiative!!!
- girvo 13y agoThis will get lost in the rest of the comments here, and the article was comprehensive, but: A friend of mine just got back from Treasure Island (she works as a stewardess on millionaires boats), and hung out with a lot of the guys working on this. This is definitely Google's doing, and she was told that it is indeed a data-centre, but that's all the info she got.