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Is Google Building a Floating Data Center In San Francisco Bay?

Posted by Soulskill on from the walk-to-shore-and-scream-your-search-queries-at-it dept.

snydeq writes "CNET's Daniel Terdiman investigates an oversize secret project Google is constructing on San Francisco's Treasure Island, which according to one expert may be a sea-faring data center. 'Something big and mysterious is rising from a floating barge at the end of Treasure Island, a former Navy base in the middle of San Francisco Bay. And Google's fingerprints are all over it,' Terdiman writes. 'Whether the structure is in fact a floating data center is hard to say for sure, of course, since Google's not talking. But Google, understandably, has a history of putting data centers in places with cheap cooling, as well as undertaking odd and unexpected projects like trying to bring Internet access to developing nations via balloons and blimps.'"

3 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"Secret" by jo_ham · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why use the seawater as your working fluid?

    Just make a closed cycle and put a heat exchanger down there. No need for the seawater to be exposed to anything except the exterior radiators.

  2. There'a another in Portland, Maine by WaxlyMolding · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is another barge in the harbor in Portland, Maine http://www.pressherald.com/news/Myserty_Portland_barge_and_San_Francisco_barge_appear_linked_.html

  3. There's 4 of them by wimh · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to the US ship registration database (go to http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st1/CoastGuard/VesselByName.html and search for BAL0), there are four similar barges, with the convenient names:
    BAL0001
    BAL0010
    BAL0011
    BAL0100

    Looks like there's a pattern there, and it does scream Google...