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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."
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.
Because Google.
I guessed it was a software development site to be anchored 12.1 miles off shore and staffed with Indians, Chinese and whatnot. No H1-B visas needed.
But you could be right.
Have gnu, will travel.
OK, bare with me, it's gonna get complicated.
Thanks for the offer, but I'll have to pass. I don't really want to see your private parts.
If a mysterious project from a major tech company gets dropped silently how is this not news for nerds?
The barge was hosting Google+. We hope.
Yeah it's been on /. previously a bunch, so probably some people are interested in the follow-up: 2008, 2008 again, 2013, 2013 again. Might've missed some others in between.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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 believe Google was genuine in their attempts to scope this idea. What Google did get was a lesson in port authorities and waterside workers. The so called secrecy flies in the face of the two traditional groups. Port Authorities do not give up regulatory power, and the workers do not tolerate secrecy. If Google thought this would have been like a land based data center in Oregon or some such place they were sorely mistaken.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
The Coast Guard regulations too.
Passionately Indifferent
The theory, from the investment bankers, is that for every 20 nutso projects, one will be a homerun and return more than 20:1 on the investment. 95% failure rate still = win.
Google's approach seems to involve throwing money at lots of high-risk projects. Most flop, horribly. But when they go achieve success, they come up with something like gmail that can potentially be successful enough to offset all the money wasted on failures. High risk, high reward.
They didn't come up with gmail.
They bought it.
They bought maps, too.
They bought voice, too.
They bought the vast majority of shit you associate with them. And in the vast majority of cases, they paid way, way, too much.
If I was an investor I'd be pissed. If I was a stock holder, I'd be riding the gravy train. Note that investors and stock holders are often very different things.
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.