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Google Buys Finnish Paper Mill
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Feb 12, 2009 10:10 AM
from the now-they-aren't-making-google-book dept.
from the now-they-aren't-making-google-book dept.
raffnix writes "Today, Finland-based paper group Stora Enso has announced that Google is buying the buildings and most of the Summa Mill site, where production of paper was ceased last month, for approximately 40 million Euros ($51.7 million). Obviously the space is most likely going to serve as a data center, which has now also been confirmed by
Reuters."
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Media has it Wrong (Score:5, Funny)
Shows what the media knows. Haven't they heard of GMail Paper [google.com]? Here's the spiel from Google:
With Google's ad revenue suffering due to economic conditions, I imagine they need this new source of revenue very badly. For those who are curious, Wikipedia has a great article [wikipedia.org] detailing the history of this new venture by Google.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
on the contrary, for legal purposes it would be better to clear your email inbox every 3 months and archive the emails involving SOX matters to another location... for a small business paper would be perfectly fine. What you DON'T want in SOX procedures is to have many locations of "stuff" out there on various backup tapes "just in case". If you have legal trouble they'll suddenly want EVERY backup tape you ever made as evidence.. you need to have a system that PROVES only specific locations have legal doc
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Informative? This is Google's April 1st joke from 2007.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_hoaxes#Gmail_Paper [wikipedia.org]
Read the personal quotes on the "More Info" page:
"Now that I have Gmail Paper, I understand the difference between labels and folders. I had one message with two labels, but when I tried to stick the paper version into two filing cabinets at the same time, it just wouldnâ(TM)t go."
"It's paper, plain and easy. I sometimes find myself wondering: what will Google think of next? Cardboard?"
Bill K., Armchair Futurist
But what about the environment?
Not a problem. Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment. For every Gmail Paper we produce, the environment gets incrementally healthier.
Re:Media has it Wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Informative? This is Google's April 1st joke from 2007.
Allow me to inform you: Moderation is broken. Funny gives +1 to the article but not +1 to karma. So people have taken to moderating funny comments as informative or insightful, so that when you get moderated down as Overrated you aren't suffering a net karma loss.
That or someone just got taken in, and so they deserve the karma point anyway. Let it go.
Parent
That is an April Fools Joke (Score:2)
I'll bet the neighbors are happier though (Score:2)
After all, even with this new addition to Gmail, production is going to be down. As a person born in Albany, OR, and having to smell the paper plant every time I go back- let's just say at least as smog it has "flavor" (a kind of spicy smell....)
Group *whoosh* (Score:2)
Wow. Sometimes I wonder who the hell falls for infomercials and Nigerian scams. Then I see responses to an obvious hoax like the previous, and it all makes sense.
Please tell me that the previous responses to this were trying to be ironic, I'd feel a lot better about the human race.
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But... Pop-ups [makersgallery.com] and flashy animations [nerdkits.com] are physically possible in the paper medium
Re:Media has it Wrong (Score:4, Funny)
One of my favorite parts of the joke was the testimonial:
"Now that I have Gmail Paper, I understand the difference between labels and folders. I had one message with two labels, but when I tried to stick the paper version into two filing cabinets at the same time, it just wouldnâ(TM)t go."
Mayumi M., Associate
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Re:Media has it Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Gmail paper was the 2007 april's fool joke...
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Yeah, I mean this is /., where you get modded up for not reading TFA!
--The FNP
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Of course it isn't! Didn't you read the Wikipedia article?!?! Obviously it's com-pletely seerious.
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They shut it down for a lack of wood fiber? They should just have planted 30 one-acre stands of Supertrees near by- one a year.
Data center? A likely story (Score:4, Funny)
No, I see what Google's angle is. Get everybody using computers, move away from paper, and once nobody else is making paper suddenly Google will come out with the latest hot product only available on paper! And you have to have this product; nay, you need this product. You couldn't face your friends and family without it. This plan is so cunning, so clever, so devious, you could stick a tail on it and call it Karl Rove.
Re:Data center? A likely story (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Google is larger than a whole raft of sovereign nations. They have their own airline. They seem to be trying to be a bank [blogspot.com]. Printing money is next.
Old News? Wrong Headline? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought everyone new that due to the advent of Internet and Google (docs, mail, etc) *ALL* Paper Mills were Finnished.
Google Buys building. (Score:4, Funny)
wow.
A paper mill is just a big building. I use to work for a company where the building use to be an old saw mill. Heck the house I live in use to be a small Candy Factory.
Re:Google Buys building. (Score:5, Informative)
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It is also a very big building with a massive supply of electricity already installed.
Even better: Many paper mills are located next to rapids in rivers, where they have their own hydroelectric generators.
Re:Google Buys building. (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting thoughts, but not necessarily valid all around. I worked in pulp and paper for 6.5 years, so I know my way around paper mills and had a few thoughts.
Yes, paper mills have large electric service hook ups. Not diffcult to hook into.
Yes, paper mills use their own closed loop water systems, BUT when the paper mill was decommissionined, most of that equipment was probably taken away and went to another facility of the paper company. Also, the systems are at times "closed loop", but they are also quite often closed loop when you look at the facility entire with the water that hits the floor being recycled back into the water system for reuse.
Also, paper mills water systems usually deal with 10" + diameter pipes I imagine most of the piping would not be a good reuse for cooling in a server environment without sever revamping.
The standards required for server cooling loops and that of a paper mill are quite differnet. In paper mills, it is a routine task to take a hose and spray things down. Because of this, small leaks in pipe, no big deal, the water will flow into the sumps and be picked up and put back in. Imagine reusing the old pipes to do some cooling loops and have a water spray t 140 psi shooting water across your server room or into the cube farm.
Someone pointed out many paper mills are on rivers and generate their own power. Even if not using the river (which they need to dump effluent as well), many have power generating stations associated with them as well. There is a good chance that the mill has a generating station hooked to it. Google coudl have purchased that, or the paper company could have maintained ownership. Either way, the new data center is probably connected to the power station to increase reliability.
So I think the big thing that Google gets out of it is:
A shell of a building (take almost everything out from inside)
Large electrical server
Possible power generating station ownership or being directly connected to the power station.
Parent
The "Paper Mill" part is incidental (Score:5, Interesting)
They just need industrial space. It just so happens that paper mills, like data centers need a lot of electricity.
Which is cheap if your grid is fed by a hydroelectric dam (Summa, Finland area does have hydro-power).
Lots of paper mills have gone out of business in the last decade, changing paper use habits has caused this.
Re:The "Paper Mill" part is incidental (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:The "Paper Mill" part is incidental (Score:5, Insightful)
I was not aware that the Niagara paper mill was closing down. But I don't think a data center will employ as much people as a paper mill, nor will it be of the same skill set. While it certainly would create some good paying jobs, Niagara will need more than that to replace the jobs lost.
Parent
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There is also a paper mill in Niagara Wi. that is also being closed by Stora Enso that has its own hydro electric dam. Google could do the same thing here. Google could put a small town back to work.
While the actual production line of pulp to paper is quite automated, the reason a paper mill is a big deal is that it's lots of manual labor, lots of people to supervise and maintain trucks and machinery, lots of shipping and handling and so on. Computer center? Throw up a well controlled environment with sensors and there it sits, replacing parts is nothing like maintaining the milling equipment and most other things can be done remotely. I'd be very surprised if they need 1/10th the manpower that the mil
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Not only do they need space. I heard that they also need to be near water to be used for cooling. A paper mill will have access to water.
Its 2009 already! (Score:5, Informative)
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CmdTaco is living in the past.
You're living in the past, man! - Leo from That 70's Show
Gmoney (Score:3, Funny)
CmdrTaco == Time Traveller (Score:2, Insightful)
last month in January 2008
I knew it! CmdrTaco is a Time Traveller. Getting our news from the past.. brilliant!
Re:CmdrTaco == Time Traveller (Score:4, Informative)
I think this joke is Finished.
Parent
Why is this news? (Score:5, Interesting)
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This is why I marked it badtitle in tags! Just add the word FORMER to paper mill and it would be more accurate and informative.
Primatech (Score:5, Funny)
Are you sure it wasn't Primatech they aquired? That would fit perfectly with their "Don't be evil" motto.
Location, location, location. (Score:5, Informative)
My co worker tells me they have a power plant on site, so tick the electricity box...
The location is right my the sea, and also handily close to Russia. There's a map in this Helsingin Sanomat article:
http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Stora+Enso+closing+Summa+and+Kemij%C3%A4rvi+mills+at+brisk+pace+/1135233375617 [www.hs.fi]
So basically they can easily lay cable from and to the site, and they can have excellent connections to Russia without actually having to place the hardware there. (Not that I'm sure it would be an issue these days.)
Also, they can literally put the hardware on a ship and ship it right to the location.
Re:Location, location, location. (Score:5, Informative)
This seems to be the site:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=ensontie+summa+finland&sll=60.535839,27.158031&sspn=0.065861,0.179901&ie=UTF8&ll=60.544113,27.142239&spn=0.065844,0.179901&t=h&z=13&iwloc=addr [google.com]
(Judging from the fact that "Ensontie" (Enso road) goes right by the gray bits which are clearly an industrial complex.)
Parent
Re:Location, location, location. (Score:5, Informative)
The original site was home to the lumber yard, pulp mill, port, and paper mill designed in 1936 by famous architect Alvar Aalto. It also includes two groups of housing complexes - one for management, and another further away for employees and their families. All of the support buildings (schools, cafeteria, etc.) are also on-site. In total I believe there is housing for around 100 families, with 6 reserved for management.
The worker housing is not the low-quality type that Ford built around it's factories, which Aalto was aware of, and he even referred to Ford's (and other companies doing this at the time) as shanty towns when designing this facility.
Parent
Mistake in headline: (Score:5, Funny)
Should be "Google to produce hardcopy of Internet"
Finnish Him! (Score:2, Funny)
Doesn't sound like google they don't finnish anything half their products are still in beta!
its not good enough for google (Score:3, Funny)
to merely put the newspaper industry's reason for existence into doubt
now google actually has to go out and confiscate newspapers' means of production and forcibly convert paper mills into data centers? talk about insult on top of injury
i think someone at google is taking this whole notion of the digital "revolution" a little too seriously, no? do they assassinate rupert murdoch and demolish the conde nast building next?
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> ...do they assassinate rupert murdoch...
We can only hope.
Paper = weight (Score:5, Informative)
Paper mills are designed for heavy machines and heavy rolls of paper. That means that they have strong floors which don't flex, and they don't collapse when you put in a few tons of batteries.
Because of this, telcos (which are largely DC operations and have huge battery backups) love defunct printing buildings and use them for switches.
It makes perfect sense that Google would want such a stable, heavy building.
Stora Kopparberg (Score:5, Interesting)
Stora Enso has its headquarters in Finland, but it is both a Finnish and Swedish company. In 1998 Swedish Stora Kopparberg and Finnish Enso-Gutzeit Oy merged into Stora Enso. What is interesting about Stora Kopparberg ("great copper mountain") is that it started out as a copper mining company and is probably the oldest existing corporation in the world. The first shares for Stora came out in 1288.
Re:How nifty! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:How nifty! (Score:4, Informative)
Lex Nokia, which hasn't been passed yet, would allow the employer to monitor his employees email accounts located at company servers. It as absolutely nothing to do with Russia, unless we're talking about Russians who are employed by Google and use Gmail.
I repeat: this law, if it passes, would let the employer read emails sent to or from his own email servers by his employees. I'm pretty sure that's not "unprecedented", at least not outside Finland.
Probably the same as Google's connections with China: the company will do whatever it's told. What does that have to do with anything?
Parent