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Google, Microsoft Escalate Data Center Battle
miller60 writes "The race by Microsoft and Google to build next-generation data centers is intensifying. On Thursday Microsoft announced a $550 million San Antonio project, only to have Google confirm plans for a $600 million site in North Carolina. It appears Google may just be getting started, as it is apparently planning two more enormous data centers in South Carolina, which may cost another $950 million. These 'Death Star' data centers are emerging as a key assets in the competitive struggle between Microsoft and Google, which have both scaled up their spending (as previously discussed on Slashdot). Some pundits, like PBS' Robert X. Cringley, say the scope and cost of these projects reflect the immense scale of Google's ambitions."
Microsoft's is to run Vista. While Google's is to save the world.
The aim for both of these giants is to shift people towards non-local computing, that is software and applications that run remotely rather than on someone's own computer.
Early signs of this beyond the obvious google applications that require web access, are aggressive attempts by Microsoft to "activate" everything online. You are going to increasingly need network connections to run standard applications.
I don't like that myself, since it hurts reliability and autonomy in computing. From a marketing perspective, there are huge benefits to centralized computing of course. Take gmail for instance, which lets google mine your private communications to gain insight into products and services which might interest you.
For the time being, it's surely a good thing if two extremely wealthy companies pour resources into creating ultra-high capacity facilities such as these, particularly as Google's business model is based around providing services which are nominally 'free' (in terms of dollars) and as such these resources are in a sense an investment in our common infrastructure. If we're really lucky Google and Microsoft will hugely over-invest, and one day find themselves with a large overcapacity which third parties might be able to use for their own work.
However, longer term things may not be so appealing. Both companies have a nasty habit of collecting and storing as much personal data as possible (Google in particular), and both are pushing towards 'lock out' where you are prevented from using your own computer without their participation via connection to their networks. And of course the software industry has a history of producing only one winner in the end, meaning the benefits of this kind of head-to-head competition are unlikely to last...
Read Pynchon.
These 'Death Star' data centers are emerging as a key assets in the competitive struggle between Microsoft and Google
That's no zune...
Push Button, Receive Bacon
" Some pundits, like PBS' Robert X. Cringley, say the scope and cost of these projects reflect the immense scale of Google's ambitions."
Can you say E-penis? I knew you could.
I agree, does this hack have to be referred to in every single slashdot article?
On Thursday Microsoft announced a $550 million San Antonio project, only to have Google confirm plans for a $600 million site in North Carolina.
It looks like it's time to invest in IBM, Red Hat, Maxtor, and Intel. They may sell a lot of hardware and software.
The truth shall set you free!
If it isn't the hackers trying to break into your system, it's Google's marketing partners getting exclusive access to your communications.
Forget that, I'd rather have my own mail server at home, not to mention my own apps at home. I don't even trust ISP's.
This "offsite word processing" crap is for chumps - anyone with sensitive data would be utter idiots to go there.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
"The aim for both of these giants is to shift people towards non-local computing, that is software and applications that run remotely rather than on someone's own computer."
ASP
"Early signs of this beyond the obvious google applications that require web access, are aggressive attempts by Microsoft to "activate" everything online. You are going to increasingly need network connections to run standard applications."
Piracy
"I don't like that myself, since it hurts reliability and autonomy in computing. "
Time-sharing
"From a marketing perspective, there are huge benefits to centralized computing of course. Take gmail for instance, which lets google mine your private communications to gain insight into products and services which might interest you."
Non-Google sources of free E-Mail
So now we know why the sky is always black with pollution in sci-fi movies... we cover the earth with multi-gigawatt eating data centers.
Since electricity is a continent-wide commodity you can guess whose electric bill will be going up as they buy up all the watts just so they can store every little detail about your life.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
A construction of a real Death Star data center would require a lot more manpower than Google or Microsoft has to offer. I bet there are independent contractors working all over these things: plumbers, carpenters, electricians, DBAs, MBAs, roofers, etc. In order to get one built quickly and quietly they'd have to hire anybody who could do the job. Do you think the average Google employee knows how to install a toilet main? All he knows is JavaScript and Knuth.
All these independent contractors in each Death Star data center are getting involved in a war between Microsoft and Google- a war they had nothing to do with.
Google needs a $600 million data center to serve its 300 million daily users, while Microsoft needs its $550 million data center to serve both of it's MSN Live Search users.
The Big 3 are also fighting in India. http://convergence.in/blog/2006/10/31/reliance-com m-bags-enterprise-business-from-google-yahoo-and-m icrosoft/
Reliance is the same company which bought Flag Telecom after the Dot Com bust.
the article was about nerds in the box rushing to get free donut in room 13A and throwing pens at each other which actually happened in my comp.sci lab, hour before the project due time.
It's a clear sign that Google is growing way too fast for its own good, and spending crazy money on stupid things simply for the sake of spending crazy money. It's in Microsoft's best interest to spend down some of its war-chest to get Google to bankrupt itself with follies, or at least get it down to Yahoo-size in terms of industry influence.
Microsoft can afford spending what seems to be stupid-huge money as a long-range strategy of slowing and co-opting all software technology advancement... it will stifle, then copy, then control then monopolize any and all emerging technology markets. It will spend whatever it costs and take however long it needs to meet these goals. In the end, Microsoft will either make a mint, or make damn sure no-one else can.
Google needs to start saving some of its massive new revenue to build a war-chest, and work on solidifying and expanding the control of the market it's already got. Building the War-Chest, massive reserves of cash and assets that can be flipped for a quick buck, is especially important. John Sculley did this at Apple just before things went bad, and it saw the company through years and years of hell. Playing Microsoft's money-wasting game, acting like it's the '70s in Silicon Valley, will get you bankrupt and wondering where the good times went.
Not to mention that offering engineers the chance to work with such massive computing resources has to be great for recruiting.
Not releasing products & changing the world.
So much for the solar panels they were planning on installing in some building that would only provide electricity for 40% of the desktop computers...
These 'Death Star' data centers are emerging as a key assets...
Better make sure to protect the plans for that data center...one well placed shot in an exhaust vent could take out the whole thing. Not much harder then hitting a womp rat with a T-16, from what I hear...
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
I'm an engineer, and I can tell you that an engineer's politics come heavily into play when choosing jobs. Just three months ago I was offered a job building a huge data center in the valley, in a vast facility. And then I learned how screwed up the company's financials were. The money was right, but the risk was too big. So I passed the job onto a friend of mine.
They just laid his ass off and shut down the entire outfit, but they still have to run the air conditioning because of a few third party servers left over. He wasn't even finished running his CREATE TABLE scripts. I'm still employed because I recognized the risks involved in working in a Death Star. Anyone working in a Death Star data center for Google or Microsoft is aware of the risks involved in that war. Whatever happens to them is their own fault.
I live in San Antonio, about 25 minutes from the proposed location, and I'm not sure how it makes me feel. On one hand I hate Microsoft, on the other, it will bring plenty of jobs to the area, and for sure boost our tech status. How should I feel? I wish it was google personally, but meh.
- Aetheral Research -
As long as it doesn't violate GPL (and it does not), I'm fine with Google not releasing their stuff to the masses. Nearly every big Linux shop has their own tweaked version of Linux kernel, so it's not like they're evil or something.
The guy made a bad call years ago and you're still bashing him over the head with it? Christ, people forgive criminals sooner than that.
,em.I, Cringely, than all those money-grubbing ones to Roland Piquepaille's adfarm (co-sponsored by Zonk and Co of course).
Cringely writes interesting and perceptive opinions. He also rates the success and failure rates of his predictions quite mercilessly, something no other columnist or "pundit" ever does about their own hits and misses.
I'd much rather see links on Slashdot to
And unlike Roland, Cringely has never been guilty of plagiarism. He made one single inadvisable statement regarding his academic qualifications a very long time ago, but he's never committed plagiarism, or been a Dvorak or Katz, and it's not very often you can say that about a journalist.
FX: Guard on gate waves hand mysteriously 'This isn't the Data Complex you're looking for'
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
...is a fantastic book about (among other things) establishing a massive data center (actually, an enclave in a barely fictional tiny rich country, perhaps the Bultanate of Srunei). And come on--it's Neal Stephenson! Well-written and informative, if you want to know more about the whys and wherefores of data centers, this is a great book.
Thanks for the info guys.
Compare Linux to Vista and try to imagine how many machine Microsoft needs to match Google. They are already losing big time in the bang for the buck category. However, it is even worse than that, because Microsoft can't spend their way out of this hole. Google has architected their Linux-based systems to scale well, and if there is one thing Microsoft OSes do not do, it is scale. Well, actually there's a whole bunch of other things they also can't do, but the point here is that Microsoft won't be able to catch up just be throwing more money at the problem. Nice to think that Microsoft may have finally met their match.
Unfortunately, if Google gets sufficient power, I expect it to corrupt them.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
With the doomsday clock at 11:55 they decided to code name the sites Ground Zero One, Two and Three. Helpful GPS coordinates can be found at their competitors websites. Google has nice aerial shots of the Microsoft location with coordinates in Russian, Farsi and Korean. Microsoft is offering a special GPS Zune with preloaded coordinates to the Googel sites. Ain't competition grand!
Microsoft wants to get as much money as possible from applications and "special features" running of their data centers. The thing is both Google and Microsoft are "jumping too far" in the future with this if they want to tie average consumer to their server side applications. Why ? Most of the people still don't have network connection fast enough to support this kind of Internet applications. Evolution is going this way but it can't happen before large numbers of people get optical cables to their homes. Bandwidth,is the key. Most of the people are used to get very rich programs from their computers already. Right now this kind of applications can run only from computers and local-home servers. This evolution already started with game consoles, smart phones, tablets with wifi support etc connected with home PC .
:)))
My point is don't worry about applications running strictly from servers. Microsoft might try to tie your application on them to make sure you bought your program and keep track of your application(but who cares I use Linux)..Google ?? Something much more then email or something similar to ftp program for storing large amounts of data won't work. PLEASE UPLOAD ONLY FILES SMALLER THEN 5 MB AND MAKE SURE YOU INCLUDE AS MUCH VITAL INFORMATIONS ABOUT YOU AS POSSIBLE ??
First you need natural demand for this kind of applications and this demand doesn't exist yet because of low average bandwidth people have.
ON THE END THIS TREND EXISTS AND IT IS A THREAT TO PERSONAL FREEDOM. If you really want to stop this uncontrolled server side applications in the future AND THAT COULD AND WILL HAPPEN support applications like eyeOS that I recently installed or other open source server side applications that you could install on home servers and see and control your CODE.
MS have your ignorance to their advantage.
You dont think Google has broken the 'corruption barrier' a few years ago?
They basically can track you as you surf if they wanted to.
If they arent corrupt now then they probably arent going to be corrupted.
Maybe it's time for MS to give up on the search thing because they have spent mega $$$ and still suck at it. maybe it's time for MS to stop trying to compete with everyone and just focus on what they do well: OS'es and Office Suites, and use war chest money to defend that area like no one else has ever seen, and not waste money on things that aren't their core focus, never will be their core focus and just realize they will suck at it until the end of days until they make such a thing their core focus at the expense of their core products. Why bother being all things to all people, when you can't really do all those things that well?
It's time for MS to stop with all this data center crap and trying to compete with Google. MS can only compete with Google if they make search their priority at the expense of everything else they do. And whatever they do, they will *never* be as good at what Google does.
Time to retrench and think up ways of holding the desktop and office markets, besides pumping out crapware every few years that no one cares about, but has to eat anyway. If they have to eat it, why not make the meal pleasant and amazing? Household licensing for both Vista Business and Office 2007 for $95 per PC if bought in lots of 5 for the home user? I'd be all over the suite like white on rice, and so would most people.
And then MS could claim that their Always On OS/Productivity Suite doesn't require an internet connection to work, and that would be their selling point. No point in competing against Google on Google's terms.
Are these the only 2 companies in the world now ? What happened to others like IBM etc ? are these 2 going to rule the world !!
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
Instead of warm locations like Texas and Carolina Why don't they build these datacentres near the Arctic circle, like Alaska and reduce the need for cooling?
:-)
I'm sure that with remote administration they'd only need a few guys wearing thermal underwear to press the reset button or to swap out servers physically
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Google is building Colossus and Microsoft is building Guardian.
We're hosed. Don't buy any real-estate on Crete.
--
BMO
He also rates the success and failure rates of his predictions quite mercilessly, something no other columnist or "pundit" ever does about their own hits and misses.
I disagree, it's now becoming common in prediction articles (particularly the year in review ones) on scoring last years predictions.
I prefer them, even when they're mostly wrong because of the insight into how we were thinking last year against what actually happened.
Forget it, as well as most of the other things you describe in you post. Microsoft couldn't do this even if they wanted; they've got shareholders to please. The office software market is oversaturated for a long time now, and only through artificial means is MS still able to extract money from it. They're not merely going to stop growing if they do not expand to new territories - they'll instantly drown, plain and stupid. It's very hard for the old dog to learn new tricks. They cannot possibly accommodate to a way of business without cheating on competitors, partners and customers, without spreading FUD, desecrating and locking down everything they touch... and THIS will be Microsoft's undoing.
I think "Next gen" is the next gen of "super" or something...
Whatever gave you the idea that Euro policies are less difficult to buy? Atleast in the USA you buy politicians with campaign contributions and with disclosure laws you know how much they cost. In EU with all that murky old boy networks, and well entrenched political system, you dont really have to buy the politicians but bureucrats. And they come much cheaper than the politicians.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Now witness the firepower of this fully operational battle station...
I hear a shark being jumped.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
I called the South Carolina situation about a year ago. SC has cheap land and power plus an OC-192 goes through Columbia to the University of SC(the first USC, sorry Alumnus). I just figured no one would do it because the schools are so bad no one would move there. I wonder what kind of jobs these Data Centers employ.
"If you like Battlestar Galactica, you're probably a huge nerd." -Stephen Colbert
To produce the aluminum used in one beverage can, about 0.2 kWh of energy is needed. That's roughly the amount used by a server in two hours of operation. Considering that the USA produces more than 100 billion cans/year, and only 40% of those are recycled, how many data centers it would take to equal the pollution generated by the aluminum beverage can business?
As someone from the East coast (not the LEFT coast), I am glad to see more investments this direction. I have thought for a long time that way too much goes to CA, WA, and TX, and more should come East, and especially to the depressed (since 1865) South. As a grad of a Southern school who had to move to the DC area for a good job, more jobs in the SE can only help the situation.
Does anyone who follow the Linux kernel know whether there are contributions from Google?
Rather than just assuming that because there isn't a "Google Linux for Datacenters" distribution, that they don't contribute back to the kernel developers.
Google is a founding member of OSDL (where Linus works), so I would guess they do contribute. See here for a list of free software organizations where Google is formally involved.
Maybe they are buying security against the corruption that allows the Netwoork carriers to buy regulations destroying network neutrality. If google & MS have the fibre and datacenters of their own they should be able to flank the network companies bad behaviour
Am I the only one who thinks building a data center in North Carolina only invites eventual destruction by hurricane? Granted, Google's applications are globally balanced and distributed, but it seems somewhat high risk.
Then again, data centers in CA and other west coast locations have the risk of earthquake destruction. Difference is earthquakes seem to occur once every few years to couple of centuries. Hurricanes (especially with global warming) seem to happen annually, with a major one causing east coast damage at least once per decade.
There's always Arizona, where the only major risk is A/C failure causing a total data center melt down in the middle of August.
$ man woman *
-bash:
go rent clerks, bloobloo.
Is anyone else a bit weirded out by the massive incentives the local governments have offered. I know this is nothing new, and the locals hope that these will spur further high-tech development in the area, but let's examine these cases:
San Antonio (Microsoft): No property taxes for 10 years. A $5.2 mil grant from the CPS Energy economic development fund to pay for the electrical infrastructure to build the site.
South Carolina (Google): No property taxes for 30 years (essentially, for the life of the site). The 150-acre site was granted to them, and the state government has granted about $5 mil, too. Google has been incentivized to the tune of about $100 million.
Some of the structural construction will undoubtedly be done by locals. The technical work of building the data center (installing servers, wiring everything together) is probably outside of a local construction company's expertise. The real bulk of all those hundreds of millions of dollars goes to purchasing the actual computer equipment, none of which is local. A handful of the most-well-educated locals could be employees, but most employees will be transplanted. In less than 10 years, both sites will probably be obsolete (or, worse, axed as excess capacity). As the article on Google's site notes, the obscene incentives equate to "a $500,000 sweetener for each of the 200 jobs Google will create."
For half a million dollars, I'm sure the local economy could get more bang for its buck than just one Google employee. What exactly are these local governments getting in return for their obsequiousness and prostration?
A data center can run close to 100% utility, and can (and will) be optimized for processing power per watt.
A PC will run way below peak capacity most of the time, and will typically be optimized for all kinds of things, like peak processing power per dollar initial investment. Running cost will rarely be a factor.
In the best case, the data centers will mean orders of magnitude decrease in power consumption for computing, if people start investing in PC's just powerful enough to run a web browser, and delegate everything heavy to the data centers.
In the worst case, if people keep PC's capable of the same peak performance, the increase in power consumption will be orders of magnitude smaller than the current consumption.
Thus, in the worst case we are not significantly worse of than without the data centers. In the best case, we are orders of magnitude better off.
All I have to say is COOL!
By Google building these things out in the sticks I might actually be able to work someplace cool but not have to pay crazy cost of living $$$$.
Now if I could only get up the confidence to endure the google "hazing" interview process.
From what I can tell, Google is already way ahead of MS on datacenters. To me, Google has already planned out its whole strategy on data centers. Microsoft seems to be in the "me too" phase right now and haven't thought about the whole picture beyond of building a data center.
First of all, how is Microsoft going to connect its data center(s)? Google quietly bought obscene amounts of dark fiber capacity. There was rampant speculation as to why Google was doing that and now we know. I haven't heard MS doing anything like this.
Second, what is Microsoft going to run software-wise? MS has to eat its own dog food, while Google has options. Google has probably wrote its own but only due to neccessity. Their software can be highly optimized. Microsoft has to use Microsoft whether it is right for the job or not.
This new data center isn't Google first large one and it appears not the last. I don't know whether MS has other ones planned as well.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Google is not ignorant.
Which left?
Why would you build data centers in places like North Carolina that are prone to natural disasters, while cities such as San Antonio have none? I know tech workers are a big reason, but Austin is only an hour from SA. For once, it seems like Microsoft made a better choice.
I guess more tech companies might place offices in the county if they know they aren't the only one there. With more companies in the area, it will also be easier to attract qualified employees to work there.
MS has a huge advantage in that they've already got the corporate world in the palm of their hand. The corporate world already has plenty of bandwith and the need for collaboration that web-based computing will grow from.
I think we will see MS win with the big customers and Google win with the individual. MS services will not be free (at first). Google will be free as long as you don't mind ads plastered all around the edges of your workspace.
Then Google will build in more corporate-grade features and lure larger customers. MS will create a free version that's merely a subset of it's existing functionality.
This competition will all be absolutely wonderful for the end users!
It doesn't matter which side of the planet it fires from, the planet is still toast when the Death Star fires.
The datacenter is presumably for worldwide ops, so again location is almost irrelevant.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
when your hard drive crashes?
I'm sure I don't need to answer that.
A $550,000,000 patching center and $600,000,000 pr0n center. Who said the Internet was dead?