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."

Comments

Non-local computing

[bigberk]

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.

Re:Non-local computing

[Speed Pour]

The aim for both of these giants is to shift people towards non-local computing, I thought the aim was to prove which one had the larger penis?

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. On a serious note. While I don't care all that much if google uses an automated method to push advertising on me, I am more bothered by the fact that it's a single target that retains tons of information. A hacker can break into one person's home computer and get their info, or they can break into a google server and have 2 million people. Same reason that hackers target windows/ie over linux/firefox, they can accomplish/demolish a larger audience.

Re:Non-local computing

[Richard W.M. Jones]

A hacker can break into one person's home computer and get their info, or they can break into a google server and have 2 million people.

I'd be more worried about a rogue government or future government deciding
they want to mine that data to find out who all the "terrorists" are.

Oh, wait ...

Rich.

Time to invest

[Technician]

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.

Data security nightmare

[Travoltus]

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.

As long as it doesn't violate GPL

[melted]

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.

Re:As long as it doesn't violate GPL

[John Nowak]

Would you prefer Google not exist at all or be forced to strike some deal with Microsoft?

Re:As long as it doesn't violate GPL

[dangitman]

It just seems to defeat the open source nature of Linux when you branch in a private way that avoids community code review and source code sharing.

If it's against the spirit, then why was private code-branching specifically allowed by the GPL? Isn't freedom to run your code as you see fit a big part of freedom?

Re:As long as it doesn't violate GPL

[bmo]

"It just seems to defeat the open source nature of Linux when you branch in a private way that avoids community code review and source code sharing."

It's obvious that you've not grokked GPL itself.

The GPL covers distribution. No distribution = do whatever you want with the code.

You forget that Google loses the power of peer review for their code, but that's the tradeoff. Having a lot of really smart people in their employ probably makes up for it. So they've got their own branch. They have to do their own heavy lifting.

If you remove the freedom to work on Linux in-house, then you've removed one of the freedoms _allowed_ by the GPL.

--
BMO

Re:As long as it doesn't violate GPL

[hey!]

Tailoring software to your own use is not branching. It's just using. A "private branch" is a contradiction in terms. Perhaps it could be called a "private bud", because such a modified version could become a branch. But if it can not attract users and developers, it's not a branch.

The question of the "spirit" of FOSS is profound though. Underneath the license, there are two related principles, a negative one (do not interfere with the rights of an object code recipient) and a positive one (share knowledge). The question that arises is this: should these principles apply to users of services built around the object code? There doesn't seem to be a fundamental reason why such rights are granted to people who receive the object as object code, but not people who are equally if not more affected.

I think the answer may hinge on this: of the two principles, non-interference and sharing, the sharing principle is less strong.

Users of a service created by a vendor like Google are not supposed to have the power to change that service. Otherwise it would be impossible to offer a service before its users redefined it into the oblivion of inconsistency. Google gets to define the service and control it. Not allowing users to change the service (via the source code it runs on) is not interference, because the service would not exist if any user could change the source code on a whim (Wikipedia perhaps being a related counterexample).

But if the sharing principle were equally strong Google would be obligated to share the source code of any changes it made with its users, even if they were not allowed to alter the services they depend on.

This argument leads to the conclusion that sharing must be less of a fundamental value to FOSS than it is "instrumental" to the value of non-inteference. If you control source code to object code somebody else depends on, you can interfere in their freedoms (e.g. proprietary database licenses that forbid publishing benchmarks).

This may make some sense. In engineering, the most important piece of knoweldge is usually that something can be done. In this case, the changes Google has made are probably (1) stripping unneeded features out and (2) tweaks that are highly Google specific. The first is something that any reasonably competent engineer can do, the second is probably not critical to any would be competitors amongst Google's users.

Control over source code is reaching, via the laws of copyrights and contracts, into the affairs of object code recipients. Non-sharing of know-how is something every business does to some degree; it is more difficult to draw the line between vicious and innocuous secretiveness than it is between vicious and innocuous interference.