Sometimes Google news has the tendency to get a little weird. One of the reasons I enjoy blogging about Google is that the company consistently surprises. It almost feels like I'm living in a speculative fiction narrative: a major corporation decides offshore data centers in international waters are the way of the future. Now all we are missing are cybernetically enhanced pirates and artificial intelligences behind the whole mess.
The real skinny is that Google filed for a patent on a new kind of data center. The stated objective is to cut down on the energy excesses of a typical data center, while also having the ease of movement. Typical data centers are far from mobile, and they drain resources at fairly astronomical rates. For a company like Google, with as much investment in communications and data as it has, it makes a lot of sense to innovate.
By placing the data centers on barges in the water Google plans on cutting cooling costs. The "water cooling" technique is a fairly innovative way of getting around expensive climate control facilities. By effectively keeping the data centers on barges in international water they also won't have to pay property taxes, though the United States will likely demand its cut regardless. Google even plans on using wave motion to power a kinetic energy machine, a way to reduce overhead on acquiring electricity to power these bizarre data centers.
Relatively speaking, this is an interesting approach to traditional IT dilemmas. It also brings fairly amusing problems into the mix. I expect to hear news reports of pirates kidnapping Google's data centers, quite literally robbing information. I think we are pretty squarely stepping into the far-fetched future we were always promised.
Garett Kopczynski is an IT professional for the City of Keene, NH and has been involved in the transformation of the IT group as it increasingly explores cloud computing and other next-generation initiatives. His hands-on involvement with Google Apps, and its impact on the IT environment in a municipal government organization, gives him unique insight into other applications of Google within (and beyond) a corporate office environment. In addition to his role as an IT professional, Garett has also been involved in ongoing research efforts for a number of "future impact" technologies such as e-waste and open source vs. licensed software.
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