Google's Secretive Data Center 391
valdean wrote in with a NYTimes article about Google which says "On the banks of the windswept Columbia River [in Oregon], Google is working on a secret weapon in its quest to dominate the next generation of Internet computing. But it is hard to keep a secret when it is a computing center as big as two football fields, with twin cooling plants protruding four stories into the sky...' What's the goal of this new complex? Expanding Google's raw computer power. It's one more piece in the Googleplex, the massive global computer network that is estimated to span 25 locations and 450,000 servers.'
Barren wasteland no more? (Score:5, Insightful)
And odd as it may seem, the barren desert land surrounding the Columbia along the Oregon-Washington border -- at the intersection of cheap electricity and readily accessible data networking -- is the backdrop for a multibillion-dollar face-off among Google, Microsoft and Yahoo that will determine dominance in the online world in the years ahead.
Microsoft and Yahoo have announced that they are building big data centers upstream in Wenatchee and Quincy, Wash., 130 miles to the north. But it is a race in which they are playing catch-up. Google remains far ahead in the global data-center race, and the scale of its complex here is evidence of its extraordinary ambition.
When I read stuff like this, I am reminded of Isaac Asmiov's Multivac stories, where the massive computer was always out in some deserted wasteland, far away from the bulk of humanity. It seems strange that the battle for Internet supremacy is taking place in the Northwestern United States. Now the question is: will the Yahoo and Microsoft data centers show up on Google Earth?
In more pessimistic news (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, nice while it lasted (Score:4, Insightful)
All of them soon to be unusable as soon as the new no-net-neutrality laws are in place next year...
The positive side (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:May I be the first to say... (Score:3, Insightful)
From TFA:
Um...why not be one then? (Score:1, Insightful)
But seriously, if your idea of "awesome" is to be a low-level tech peon at a huge corporation you will quickly find that there are hundreds of places out there willing to hire you; companies love hard workers with no ambition.
Re:The positive side (Score:5, Insightful)
Little things like that keep a community alive, my friend.
What about flooding? (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:What about flooding? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What everyone don't realize... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's one hell of a brilliant shadow agency. It's too intelligent to be true.