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Google's Floating Datahaven
PDG writes "Google has pending plans to take its data centers off-shore, literally. By moving their data centers to floating barges in international waters, they are able to save money on taxes and electricity (using wave based power) as well as reside their operations outside the jurisdiction of governments. There is mention of hurricane and other caveats, but I wonder how they plan to get a bandwidth pipe large enough and still be reliable. Seems like a chapter out of a Neal Stephenson novel." You might recall earlier discussions on the same subject.
Pirates.
I hope Google is willing to defend those datacenters by themselves in international waters... it would be a shame if they were sunk !
It's like the Principality of Sealand
It's situated on an old abandoned British island fortress from WWII
Shameless plug alert: Game server control panel
This is a bad dupe at best.
From what I heard was that Google was thinking of putting these in ports as mobile data centers.
Putting them off shore would cause more problems than it would solve.
1. Power. Wave power? Not with a barge. You might get a small part of you power from waves but not a lot.
2. Bandwidth. Fiber is fast everything else is slow. Running a fiber line out to a barge is iffy at best.
3. Weather.
Now if you could put one on say an offshore drilling rig that might work. If you used stranded natural gas for power and sea water for cooling it might make a little sense.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
...tomorrow space will become the next place to host their data centers, and then they'll start colonizing worlds and start being referred to as "the company"
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
I have visions of "Google-Stars" orbiting the earth, modelled after the Star Wars Death Stars. These will agther and beam the sum of Earth's knowledge. Plus they will be pollution-free running on abundant solar power above the clouds. Google will have their own private space fleet to service these. Google already leases NASA-Ames to run their private jets, and Sergey will be an experienced Cosmonaut in two years.
can be done with rolling seas..
You send something to the sea floor and secure it
the raising of the whole ship based on wave motion can drive a flywheel..... the displacement of the ship generates a LOT of power....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
It would serve as a good reminder to corporate interests, domestic and abroad, that they operate at the will of the citizens of countries that protect them. That is part of what those taxes are funding. Yarr, avast ye maties, plunder me some big iron and NAS!
While I think Google's intentions here are probably good in the "freedom of speech" department, I'd rather see them addressing the root cause preventing them from maintaining servers on shore. Taxes they can't fix, but we pride ourselves on being a "free country". What do they need us, as citizens, to do to protect their interests?
1) What country will they be flagged under?
2) Will the international community hold that country accountable if the Good Ship GooglePlex starts doing things that are "evil" in the eyes of a more powerful country?
Seriously, if they fly under the flag of a small country, what's to stop China from threatening the small country if Google tries to actively evade the Great Firewall? What's to stop the US Government from threatening sanctions if Google stops cooperating with Washington?
On the other hand, if it flies under the flag of a country that's too big to sanction, then it's still at the mercy of that country's government.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Ummm... Tsunamis are only a danger as they approach the coastline. Not 7 miles off shore. Hurricanes may be a bigger factor. Although clearly there are some places that are more hurricane-prone than others. Has a hurricane ever hit the Bay Area? Terrorists: intriguing idea. But wouldn't it be just as easy for terrorists to bomb a data center on land, if that's what they wanted to do?
ScienceSeeker.org
If a company can truly do this, I bet it's been done before. (Waiting for examples.)
East India Company
Everyone laughs, but that doesn't change reality. Reality is that when you have a huge corporation with most of its assets tied up in advanced technology, then you have to pay to keep it protected.
If you move the technology off-shore to avoid taxes, then you lose the protection that those taxes provide. Both from criminals and from the police that are being paid by the taxes that your land-based operations incur. Does Google plan to hire Blackwater (the world's largest mercenary army) to keep people away from their floating data centers?
There is also the question of getting the money to build these floating structures. As I write on Monday morning Sept 15 2008, the banking structure of the USA is collapsing. The stock market is falling and several of the largest banks of the USA have declared bankruptcy. No banks means no capital for expansion. Granted this isn't such a big issue when Google has such a large stock value, but that stock value is mostly based on speculation and Google's price could fall as fast as it rose.
There is also the question of scale. One can claim that a huge data center could be powered by wave energy; it's another thing to actually do it. Especially when you are a public corporation and have to answer to entities that hold huge blocks of your stock.
Google is a company with an oversupply of young over-educated technological Grade-Point Angels (people whose most singular talent is to convince their teachers to give them high grades in order that the teachers will be able to reflect in their angel's glory). These people have a tendency to actually believe their fantasies, especially the fantasies that involve both ecology and advanced technology.
This factor has to be considered in all of their press releases and corporate projections.
The good news: You get quoted in the London Times, and they include a link to your web site. Sweet!
The bad news: They use the UK spelling ("data centre") in the link, and don't notice the 404s.
Worse news: The Times story get Slashdotted, and all those readers can't find your site.
Live and learn. Now we own datacentreknowledge.com as well. If anyone was actually looking, our link is below.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
Shooting people who obviously intend harm to you or your property is not a morally ambiguous situation: you shoot to kill.
You either forgot the sarcasm tags, or showed very well what's wrong in the USA.
Personally, I don't think those situations would warrant the "shoot to kill" approach.
I do, however, firmly believe that we should bring back the days of loading shotgun shells with rock salt to drive away trespassing kids.
And I say this as a former trespassing kid who did once get a backside full of rock salt. Believe me, it taught me a great deal about respecting other peoples property.
Best job EVAR
Once upon a time there was a family of economists.
This included Rose Friedman, her brother what's his name, her husband Milton Friedman, their kids David and Susan, and David's kid Patri Freidman.
The general theme of their work is that economies spontaneously organize, instead of being created and managed by governments or god.
Milton won the Nobel Prize, David wrote the groundbreaking "The machinery of freedom",and Patri, well Patri's thing is seasteading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patri_Friedman
Until quite recently, Patri worked for google.