Yahoo's "Chicken Coop" Data Center Design

1sockchuck writes "Yahoo has come up with a data center design called the Yahoo Computing Coop, which it says will make its new data center in Lockport, NY one of the most efficient on earth. The design features 120-foot by 60-foot metal prefabricated facilities with louvers on the side to support free cooling, and a peaked roof to manage the release of waste heat from the hot aisle. Chief Yahoo David Filo said the name was adopted 'because it looks like something chickens live in.' The $150 million data center in Western New York, which was announced earlier today, will run on cheap hydro power from the Niagara River."

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Re:um...grats?

[omeomi]

Some people like the clean look of a Google homepage while others who want a little news go with Yahoo

So turn on iGoogle [google.com], and display all the extra info that you want on your homepage...

Re:um...grats?

[plover]

Yahoo! does a lot more than just search or portal services. I wouldn't be surprised to learn if most of their revenue comes from providing secure web stores.

Re:um...grats?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Since this is a hardware story, the mediocrity of their software side isn't a serious drawback.

In fact, that mediocrity might actually be driving some of their hardware/facilities innovation. If you are kicking ass on the software side, getting favorable ad rates, lots of buzz keeping the investors happy no matter what your P/E is, etc. you can get away with some infrastructure inefficiency(under good management you will still work to reduce this; but not doing so is easier than doing so, and you'll survive). If, however, your buzz is gone, your ad rates are slipping, and you have sharks gnawing on your stock, you can't afford to run a sloppy operation. If your revenue per visitor is poor, catering to that visitor had better be damn cheap.

Now, if a company is too far gone, or under the influence of Wall street oriented buzzsaw management, they won't have the talent needed to innovate, having lost/sacked their R&D people, and it is game over; but if a company is on the ropes but not yet down, or if their margins are simply not very good, you might expect them to do some interesting infrastructure stuff. Dell would be another one I'd put in the category. Software/design stories about them tend to be a yawn, or an embarrassment(Adamo, WTF?) but their logistics and supply chain guys are probably all cyborg ninja assassins.

Re:um...grats?

[DerekLyons]

Yahoo's search results haven't seemed competitive to me since '97.

Hint: There's much more to do on the web than search, and thus Yahoo! (and Google) provide a lot more services than search.
 
 

Honestly, I'm not trying to troll; just wondering why a site that's stagnated for over 10 years now needs anything cutting-edge.

Honestly, not trying to troll or flamebait, but are you really as ignorant as your posting makes you sound? Are you really too lazy to visit http://www.yahoo.com [yahoo.com] and spend a little time just reading the page and clicking around on the services offered?

Anyone still using them? Have any insights why we ought to care what they're up to?

I'm still using them because Google offers nothing to match the Yahoo! page I use as a homepage. (http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb [yahoo.com].) I still use Yahoo! mail for some functions as it's UI beats Gmail hands down. I still track my finances at Yahoo! because their management and analysis tools are superior to those provided by Google. I use Flickr because the collaboration and other tools it provides are superior to Picasa's. Etc... Etc...
 
Google's predominance in search and advertising blinds people to the 'also ran' status of so many of it's other services.

Flickr and games.yahoo.com

[sofakingon]

I have been using Yahoo! Flickr on a nearly daily basis, and for online card/board games, yahoo is a great place to play. Yahoo stopped being a search engine a looooong time ago, but still does other things quite well.

Re:Will this Yahoo idea live up to the hype?

[PitaBred]

Yahoo! knows exactly what they're doing. They just don't give a shit about users that know better. The ones that know better aren't the type of person to pay for services.

Re:um...grats?

[davester666]

I'm mystified by the "cheap hydro power from the Niagara River" part.

Since the story doesn't claim that they are funding the construction of a new hydro-electric dam, they are just saying 'well, we're close to a dam, so we'll claim that our power needs are clean, and you bastards further away, that were going to get this electricity if we didn't use it, you are using electricity from those ozone-destroying, greenhouse gas-generating, scarce fossil-fuel burning power plants'.

Why do we let companies get away with these stupid claims. Unless they actually are responsible for building the clean power source, they should be denied the ability to claim they are using so-called 'clean' energy just because they happen to be physically near a pre-existing 'clean' energy source.

Re:um...grats?

[unfasten]

...people can be logged into iGoogle, and still block adsense and all the other crap they disapprove of.

You are logged into their servers. They don't need all that fancy javascript and other voodoo to track you. They know exactly who you are because you're sitting there screaming it at them. All they need to do is log it straight to your account.

Sure, AdSense on other sites might be blocked but anything you do on their servers while logged in is easily logged on their end.