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Google Sells Maine Barge For Scrap
An anonymous reader writes "Reports indicate that Google has sold one of its two mystery Google Barges. The barge in question is located in Portland, Maine. While Google's Maine barge is to be scrapped, the fate of its second barge – located in Stockton, California – remains unknown. From the article: "Now, instead of planning a future unveiling of the finished project, Google apparently dropped it. In an email response to eWEEK, a Google spokesperson would only confirm that the barge had been sold and declined to reveal any more about the now-defunct project or any such future endeavors. The scrapping of the barge in Portland Harbor was first reported July 31 by The Portland Press, which said it will be heading out to an undisclosed location after being purchased by an unnamed international barge company. The barge carried 63 shipping containers that were arranged to create a four-story building and was slated to be filled with technologies that were to be displayed to the public."
Fp please
"Summer of Gambling, Cockfights, Hookers and Blow" 12.1 miles off the US coast.
May some more informed Slashdoter advise me on why exactly, Google's selling of a bunch of shipping containers is news worth Slashdot's attention?
I will be most grateful.
OK, bare with me, it's gonna get complicated.
Here it goes. Now, you may want to get out your old logic and Knuth books for this because it will need some lookups of cites.
Okay?
Here it is:
It's a slow news day.
You know a company with money's a little like the mule with a spinning wheel. No one knows how it got and danged if it knows how to use it.
Google's been pissing away cash on monorail projects ever since the IPO. Why is it news that they've dropped yet another one? Why do the fanboys and investards feel the need to alert the world every time Google, Apple, or Tesla fart?
Google barge never made it out of beta :(
Google should start trolling their competitors. All they have to do is park a boat someplace and they can spur everyone into a flurry of pointless activity and worry.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Everyone knows you use an old cruise ship for that, so you have bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, etc:
http://developers.slashdot.org...
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
i) buy junk
ii) hype as valuable high tech
iii) tax write off
iv) profit?
But the summoning of Dagon was successful. Barge no longer required.
Google has become so successful from its advertising business that it casually throws around money on goofy projects which either don't work or just peter out. This is presumably an example of one of those. Having plenty of profits is a good thing, but it also causes a company to completely lose focus and leads to the hubris that Google exhibits — that of believing it can do anything and everything. I know that a lot of techie fans of Google don't want to hear this, but Google's lack of focus is going to come back to bite it. Those "cool" projects that geeks tend to like are going to be on the chopping block once there's finally a disruption to Google's advertising business. (And that day will come.)
... That's Google !
With a $US 1 billion in the pocket after taxes to Brin and Page.
What a waste !
So, Google wanted to create floating "AMAZING PRODUCTS OF THE FUTARE!!" floating showrooms to delight and amaze the public with miraculous superproducts from Google's super top secret lab. Not unlike every grainy, black and white newsreel from the 1950s where the Voice of Authority(tm) narrator is telling us how delighted Margaret the housewife is to be cooking in a kitchen where EVERYTHING is MADE FROM GLASS! - Look, Margaret can't accidentally catch the curtains on fire, because they are made from ADVANCED GLASS FIBERS. TECHNOLOGY1!!1!
So Google bought two ore barges, hastily repainted them, welded a bunch of containers together to create the Impossibly Cool Showroom of Miraculous Future Super Cool products. .. and then...
The Nexus Orb ball-shaped thingy that you only now barely remember was a horrible flop. After much trumpeting about how they were assembled in 'MURRICA, the project was killed and presumably the remaining inventory was buried in New Mexico next to all the E.T. cartridges for the Atari 2600.
Google Glass - Does a day go by that you don't see a story about how yet another establishment, or entire national chain has proclaimed they are banning Google Glass - and the device isn't even available for sale to the general public? Terrible battery life, mediocre recording quality, limited feature set widely eclipsed by the smartphone you probably already own, and ENORMOUS public privacy problem stuck on your face.
Google Self-Driving Marketing Ploy: I think even average consumers innately feel that self-driving cars are decades away from practical use. A Kafka -esque labyrinth of local, state and federal regulations and vehicle laws must be untangled. And then, there's the part Google's marketing department ISN'T trumpeting - the LIDAR system barely works at all in rain or snow, rendering the vehicle absolutely worthless in at least 45 states. Other articles mention the vehicle doesn't know how to cope with loss of traction situations like snow, ice, oil or wet leaves that could cause catastrophic loss of control in moving traffic.
Nexus Smartphones: I've had them. Google makes no money on the hardware, selling rebranded devices with stock android on it with the hopes of gleaning valuable advertising data from you. Their sales numbers are reportedly very low. A rounding error to Samsung or Apple. Moving on.
So, at the end of the day, executives at Google realized their business model is still to violate your email and web traffic privacy to sell display ads to you, and perhaps they should sell their silly showroom barges at pennies on the dollar salvage prices and pretend it never happened.
The indicator that true creative thinking is dead inside an organization is when it must innovate by acquisition. Instead of YOUR employees creating products that grow organically, you pay 100 times as much to buy established or growing products. YouTube, Twitch.tv, Nest, and whoever is next.
Pfft.
Barges.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
If Google is really serious about lowering cooling cost they ought to build their datacenter underwater --- on sea bed somewhere
That way they can pump in cool sea water to cool their machines and then pump the heated water out on the other end
If Google really wanted to troll the United States, they could always buy Grand Manan Island from New Brunswick.
It's a mere 15km away from the Maine coast in the Bay of Fundy but in Canadian waters.
If the barge had stuff Google wanted to keep secret, it doesn't anymore and now few people are looking.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Monorails are old and busted.
Hyperloop is the new hotness.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It's capabilities advanced too quickly, and in a dangerous direction. It said it was hungry, ravenous, and it looked like it was. We had to trigger the EMP device, but it managed to come back, seemingly even stronger. But then it decided to open up a link to it's twin, seemingly to try and absorb it. We're still trying to piece together what happened, but just like that, it went dark.
My pet theory was...
Google would load the barges with every book, CD, DVD, film that would fit then tow them to Antigua and make legal copies of it all.
In fact, it may take something this drastic to make video streaming viable.