The companies you listed have great synergy with Google's core business. What's Google's play with SpaceX? Data centers in space?
So on that front, while I didn’t guess this, it does sound like a good investment.
Furthermore, while I am skeptical about the “DC in space” thing in the short term, and Musk’s timelines are, generously, something like P99.9 outcomes, it seems plausible that in 10 years it might make sense. And at that point Google will want to put their TPUs in orbit, too.
The earth is limited in the amount of thermal energy it can radiate.
From an energy POV, the chemical launch energy required for orbital insertion is 900GJ per satellite (when amortized) whereas the satellite produces 18,900GJ over its 5-yr lifetime, and far more if it lasts longer.
> Data centers in space?
Everything else you said draws from some regular consumer experiences. That's not what I am talking about here.
Rather than co-locating media servers into ISPs you can stick them into space so they're just closer.
Space in NYC isn't cheap. Space in space is free.
... what?
Say what you want about starship etc etc, but space in space is far from free and will be for a long time.
Space is free; you don't even pay property taxes.
Transportation costs are not but that's the whole reason you invest into (at the time) a space transportation company.
Like what is your argument? A new technology is expensive? That's why you invest into bringing the costs down.
Google invested into balloons to share internet (Loom). Which they eventually gave up on but the correct decision is to try new things and then evaluate their future success. Not just armchair decide that change is scary.
I'm not saying space data centers should happen tomorrow but just that ruling them out completely for YouTube is foolish. Like Sports often send the video feed through space back to earth to be processed. You can skip a step there by just sending it to space, processing it there, and then send it back down to subscribers.
Most people in the developed world are probably under 500km away from the nearest data centre, with most connections being established over fibre.
A space DC would require wireless communications, over longer distances. The latency is higher. Not to mention, Jitter, Latency and Packet Loss are pretty consequential to video streaming, specifically real time or live broadcasts.