Google's Floating Datacenters (Think Oil Rigs) | Hacker News Reader

Google's Floating Datacenters (Think Oil Rigs)

blogs.zdnet.com

62 pointsfuriouslol40 comments

It never ceases to amaze me that all of these things that Google does are built on the backs of people clicking advertisements.

They are building floating power plants so we can find out what Abraham Lincoln's favorite color is faster!

There's an old saying that half of advertising is wasted, but you never know which half.

Now imagine all that is spent on marketing and advertising and imagine google reducing the waste by even a little bit. That's worth a lot.

But I too am amazed that old ladies in middle America on fixed income are pretty much 99% of the ad market.

But I too am amazed that old ladies in middle America on fixed income are pretty much 99% of the ad market.

That's not really true of adwords. The whole 'lower-middle wage housewife interested in sweepstakes' persona were the ones that clicked on banner ads, 10 years ago. Anyway, the way ppc adversising is structured these days, 'most clicks' & 'most advertising spending' are not the same thing.

There's an old saying that half of advertising is wasted, but you never know which half.

That's the point of adwords. You know which half. Roughly anyway.

And don't forget; they're also launching their satellites into orbit to make their maps better.

To clarify, GeoEye launched a mapping satellite to use for government and commercial use, and reported Google has an exclusive license whereby no other company can publish the publically imagery in a Google-Maps-style application.

I must say, much more interesting then most goldmines in this world. Couldn't imagine Yellow Pages doing this.

heh. How many people just Googled "Abraham Lincoln's favorite color"?

Your comment came up second.

Now that's freshness!

I love how there is something practical about building floating data centers, as if the coolness factor wasn't enough.

I wonder how much of the practicality is land/electricity costs and how much is regulation/taxes flight?

The later could be considered as "practicality" as well.

Absolutely, but I bet it won't be long before the government tries to tax offshore data centers as well.

They'd have to treat them the same as oil rigs, at least in theory.

Wow, I've never seen a scenario where I pictured google on the same side as oil lobbyists.

I think this is a fascinating concept.

That said, I've seen equipment that comes back from vessels and oil rigs. Aside from the sheer messiness of the oil rig, the environment (salt, corrosion, water) can be pretty brutal... Solvable naturally, but a hassle.

It's good that an entity with the resources and creativity of Google is working on the problem now, so when the oceans rise and separate us into floating colonies with the occasional gilled mutant, we can still get reliable commodity computer hardware.

In the Oil Rigs, there are people working daily.

Who are going to be the sysadmin or security personal working on this data center?

That thought crossed my mind as well. But since these installations are so close to shore, workers can be ferried there pretty easily. So they avoid all the trouble and cost that oil companies have with people actually living there.

But what about evacuations in case of bad storms? Have they just invented a new type of outage? :-)

If they have foosball and free meals, they must figure no one would ever want to leave.

I am wondering if this can have any negative ecological side-effects. I know a large issue with nuclear powerplants was them using local rivers for cooling. In the end, they raised the temperature of local lakes enough to make algae produce less oxygen, fish be wiped out, and overall adversely effect water life.

If you put enough of these in close proximity (the wake/wind 'sweetspots'), can they potentially heat up their surroundings enough to make a difference? I understand the ocean is a different beast from lakes, but if you can heat up a square mile, that's a lot of sea life existing in that mile. As quoted, 40MW of power is not exactly little heat.

These will be the first sysadmins that get their own series on Discovery or History.

Floating & wave power is cool, but the offshore oil rig style datacenter was tried way back in 2000 and it wasn't a big success.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havenco

I wonder if they plan to abandon the use of cheap commodity servers for these data centers since the cost of replacing a malfunctioning server becomes much higher.

I wonder if it is that much higher. Oil rigs are a long way offshore since that's where the oil is. These just can't hit the bottom, and closer tends to be better. Less cable, easier access, etc.

Not really that much higher.

It's not like they'd ship a new one out from the mainland every time one failed -- they'd have a huge stack of spares sitting around on the rig and replenish it every now and then.

Sounds like Google and Peter Thiel should talk.

If in neutral waters this could save them from troubles with jurisdiction and differences in the legislation between EU, USA, China, Russia etc.

Which suspect would pale insignificance compared to the threat from the new generation of pirate that such an installation would spawn.

Visions of a parrot sitting on someone's shoulder squawking "pieces of RAM".

Its really intriguing how Google, in spite of its ever-growing size, is able to come up with out of the box solutions.

Datacenters... sure that's what they want you to think. Haven't you read Snow Crash?!

Welcome to a whole new breed of digital pirate?

haha, we just realized that future digital pirates can be /actual pirates/.

Instead of untested wind farms on liners, why not just use nuclear power. It is well tested (think aircraft carriers). Furthermore, while such a reactor may need fuel and disposal services, the wind farms will likely also require spare parts so the self sustenance thing may come out to be even or even in the favor of nuclear. Furthermore, nuclear reactors have a significantly better space/watt ratio allowing for more space for crew and servers.

There are other factors. Wind is intermittent -- not good for servers which have to be active 24/7. To use it would require massive (bigger even than what is already there) batteries which themselves would entail a massive extra cost. Nuclear power also allows easy desalination of sea water which (I assume) would be required for cooling sensitive electronic equipment (expensive servers).

The red tape associated with such an idea would be pretty scary though.

You forgot the cost of hiring of mercenaries to protect your nukes from pirates.

good point. data centers do not have their own military contingent like navy aircraft carriers. Wonder what that does to the cost equation. It seems to be somewhat fixed so if we make this big enough...

One could also try different technologies which make it harder to weaponize the nuclear fuel like pebble bed reactors but then thats never been deployed on a ship.

I imagine that Google has a clean tech agenda here as well as a 'how do I cool & power a data center' agenda.

Not to worry. The general consensus is that the courts will not hold google responsible for piracy...

Tracking the spread of this trend around the world...

http://edopter.com/trends/Offshore_Data_Centers

God bless the SS Google and all who search with her!

Now they can do search AND monkey knife fights! Will Google's wonders never cease?

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