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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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I'm looking forward to buying one of these datacenters cheap on the used market, so I can run emacs with all the eye-candy switched on.
... and then they built the supercollider.
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.
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?
And increase the cost of bandwidth, electricity, and man-power.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
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
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.