Google's Floating Datahaven 450
PDG writes "Google has pending plans to take its data centers off-shore, literally. By moving their data centers to floating barges in international waters, they are able to save money on taxes and electricity (using wave based power) as well as reside their operations outside the jurisdiction of governments. There is mention of hurricane and other caveats, but I wonder how they plan to get a bandwidth pipe large enough and still be reliable. Seems like a chapter out of a Neal Stephenson novel." You might recall earlier discussions on the same subject.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announces a multi-billion dollar investment in a fleet of submarines.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announces a multi-billion dollar investment in a fleet of submarines.
You kid, but wait till Google has some shit that China, Iran, or even the US doesn't like. Or Greenpeace or some other aggressive group doesn't like.
Accidents do happen at sea!
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
It would serve as a good reminder to corporate interests, domestic and abroad, that they operate at the will of the citizens of countries that protect them. That is part of what those taxes are funding. Yarr, avast ye maties, plunder me some big iron and NAS!
While I think Google's intentions here are probably good in the "freedom of speech" department, I'd rather see them addressing the root cause preventing them from maintaining servers on shore. Taxes they can't fix, but we pride ourselves on being a "free country". What do they need us, as citizens, to do to protect their interests?
Google & guns (Score:5, Insightful)
So will Google have to have armed guards to shoot pirates? Is killing people to protect your servers considered "evil" ?
Re:Google & guns (Score:4, Insightful)
Shooting people who obviously intend harm to you or your property is not a morally ambiguous situation: you shoot to kill.
If it's your employer's property and you job is to protect it, you do the same.
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Shooting people who obviously intend harm to you or your property is not a morally ambiguous situation: you shoot to kill.
You either forgot the sarcasm tags, or showed very well what's wrong in the USA.
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Re:Google & guns (Score:5, Insightful)
Lol wut?
What is morally ambiguous about shooting people who are threatening to shoot you?
Not as some kind of bizarre Iraq war metaphor, I mean if someone breaks into your house, or your place of employment, and threatens you with a gun.
You also have a gun, so you shoot them. This is not a difficult moral dilemma.
Re:Google & guns (Score:4, Insightful)
You missed the "or your property" bit.
Would you really shoot to kill some kids that are egging your house on halloween? What about stealing apples from your backyard?
Re:Google & guns (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I don't think those situations would warrant the "shoot to kill" approach.
I do, however, firmly believe that we should bring back the days of loading shotgun shells with rock salt to drive away trespassing kids.
And I say this as a former trespassing kid who did once get a backside full of rock salt. Believe me, it taught me a great deal about respecting other peoples property.
Re:Google & guns (Score:5, Insightful)
You've got to use a little common sense here, dude.
I'm talking about people invading your home (or, in the spirit of the original conversation, your offshore datacenter) with guns and intent to steal or damage your property. Kids egging your house isn't comparable, why are you even introducing it into the conversation?
Addendum (Score:3, Informative)
"Or property" is usually specified because people don't necessarily alwys want to kill you, they just want your stuff. They're usually still threatening you to get it, though.
If they're unarmed and not threatening you, like an unarmed burglar, you just point a gun at'em and call the police. Unless you're Texan, in which case they're so very dead.
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it's called hyperbole, I would just ignore the nonsense if I were you.
Re:Google & guns (Score:4, Insightful)
The question actually was: Is killing people to protect your servers considered "evil" ?
Nobody is in danger.
If someone goes to the trouble of going all the way out to sea with the intent of breaking into a multi-billion-dollar company's offshore datacenter to steal or damage property, they are obviously pretty damn serious and may very well not be worried about injuring or killing people that try to get in their way. Generally the assumption is that if someone wants to harm your stuff, they're the ones being unfair and if you have to assume the worst (within reason... so obviously not kids egging your house, but serious criminals, yes...) and protect yourself accordingly. I'm not big on violence but self defense is one of those things where you don't want to find out the hard way that you shouldn't have been so easy on the person trying to hurt you or your stuff!
-Taylor
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Uh, no. You don't shoot. You don't get mad, you don't lose your calm. That's the worst that could happen. If you can disarm the guy, you do so. If not, you give the guy what he wants, then call the police with info.
Being civilized is exactly the opposite of what you just said. And we didn't build a civilization for 6000 years (since writing, not bible-related) to come to the point where a "sensible" reaction to violence is to create a blood bath.
Disclaimer: I come from a part of the world which is not USA.
Re:Google & guns (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah call the police who will arrive in 3 hours and you lose whatever it is the thief took. The police are inefficient at actually protecting people.
I don't think being civilized means letting anyone who's threatening you, take whatever they want. I think you have a right to defend yourself and your property. Even though I'd probably do exactly what you describe.
Re:Google & guns (Score:4, Insightful)
You either forgot the sarcasm tags, or showed very well what's wrong in the USA.
You are so right. People should just stand by as those who wish to break the law do whatever they choose cause it would be evil to try and stop them. I really dislike nut jobs that think that if you play nice and give up all your power everyone else will play nice too.
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Shooting people who obviously intend harm to you or your property is not a morally ambiguous situation: you shoot to kill.
You either forgot the sarcasm tags, or showed very well what's wrong in the USA.
Apparently you don't understand soft power and hard power.
Take an example of someone breaking in to your house with the intent of harming you and your family.
Soft-power is a liberal whining "You better stop trying to harm my family...or...uh...I'll say stop again or maybe call the cops." The intruder then kills you and your family and gets away during the 5 minutes it takes the cops to respond.
Hard power is when you stand there with a gun and say "Get on the ground, and don't move until the cops get
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That's right cripple him so he can sue you in court. You saved your family, but your children's college fund is now empty and your house was foreclosed by the court.
Being dead is less expensive than being crippled. Getting sued by family members is less severe than getting sued by a quadriplegic in a wheel chair. Even a guy who has to have his two crushed testicles removed can be a major liability. In many places with bad courts (California) they figure since no amount of money will replace the function of
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Someone wants to steal from you, harm you or something like that? Stop him. That doesn't mean "use deadly force". Try to talk to the guy in order to reduce the tension. That doesn't work? Just shoot his legs, punch him in the throat, kick him in the testicles or use any other non-deadly ways of -STOPPING- him.
Very, very bad advice.
The first part is good: If you can defuse the situation verbally, great. If that doesn't work, though, and the only way you can stop it is by resorting to violence, your suggestions are all bad, in the average case.
IF you're very sure that you can take him in hand-to-hand combat, then that's a reasonable approach. How do you know that you can, though? Unless you're a martial arts expert, there's always the possibility that he knows more about fighting than you do, which will re
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You would still be protecting yourself anyway. Not many pirates these days give two shits about killing you. Just check the Caribbean or the African horn for examples of modern day piracy. People simply go missing.
Re:Google & guns (Score:5, Insightful)
Face a modern day pirate and see if the situation is ambiguous. They aren't gonna make you walk the plank. More likely they'll shoot a shoulder launched grenade up your ass if you try and stop them.
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I doubt the US govt. would ever hang a company out to dry. Look at all these companies incorporated in the Cayman Islands, but which for all other intents and purposes are US companies. They still seem to enjoy all the benefits of being legitimate. And US ships (flying the US flag) in international water
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Ha! And you think Google isn't prepared for that?
Google Android...a platform for "mobile phones" huh.
The Dalvik virtual machine sounds kinda like Dalek to me. Coincidence? Or killer robot defense force that also doubles as WiFi hotspots?
I hear they're launching stuff into space now too.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Hi Tech needs protection (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone laughs, but that doesn't change reality. Reality is that when you have a huge corporation with most of its assets tied up in advanced technology, then you have to pay to keep it protected.
If you move the technology off-shore to avoid taxes, then you lose the protection that those taxes provide. Both from criminals and from the police that are being paid by the taxes that your land-based operations incur. Does Google plan to hire Blackwater (the world's largest mercenary army) to keep people away from their floating data centers?
There is also the question of getting the money to build these floating structures. As I write on Monday morning Sept 15 2008, the banking structure of the USA is collapsing. The stock market is falling and several of the largest banks of the USA have declared bankruptcy. No banks means no capital for expansion. Granted this isn't such a big issue when Google has such a large stock value, but that stock value is mostly based on speculation and Google's price could fall as fast as it rose.
There is also the question of scale. One can claim that a huge data center could be powered by wave energy; it's another thing to actually do it. Especially when you are a public corporation and have to answer to entities that hold huge blocks of your stock.
Google is a company with an oversupply of young over-educated technological Grade-Point Angels (people whose most singular talent is to convince their teachers to give them high grades in order that the teachers will be able to reflect in their angel's glory). These people have a tendency to actually believe their fantasies, especially the fantasies that involve both ecology and advanced technology.
This factor has to be considered in all of their press releases and corporate projections.
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Google is a company with an oversupply of young over-educated technological Grade-Point Angels (people whose most singular talent is to convince their teachers to give them high grades in order that the teachers will be able to reflect in their angel's glory). These people have a tendency to actually believe their fantasies, especially the fantasies that involve both ecology and advanced technology.
If you don't have a dream
How you gonna have a dream come true ?
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That's because... (Score:5, Funny)
You see, Neal was born in 2014, he was only allowed to come back in time if he wrote some 'science fiction' novels that would cover up the fact he was a time traveller by just making him look like he made some lucky guesses.
Re:That's because... (Score:5, Funny)
bandwidth (Score:5, Funny)
Google satellites of course!
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Search results in 500ms or your adwords are free?
Re:bandwidth (Score:5, Funny)
Latency can be reduced significantly if they begin sending your results a mere moment before you submit your search.
This feature requires you to be signed in I think.
Re:bandwidth (Score:5, Funny)
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a rubber dinghy loaded to capacity with USB thumb drives.
Re:bandwidth (Score:5, Funny)
its the latency that kills you
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No, it's the sharks.
Re:bandwidth (Score:4, Funny)
Google satellites of course!
Shouldn't that be Google Skynet?
One word... (Score:4, Interesting)
Pirates.
I hope Google is willing to defend those datacenters by themselves in international waters... it would be a shame if they were sunk !
Re:One word... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry. Each barge has a team of ninjas assigned to it to fight off pirates.
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thats too bad for google then, pirates are way cooler than ninjas
patent!? (Score:5, Funny)
From the article it's clear that they want to patent the idea.
I don't understand that. What's the use of a patent if somebody infringing it is also in international waters and not bounded to patent law?
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All disputes to be settled by broadsides should parlay fail.
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You mean like this [youtube.com]?
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SeaLand? Prior Art?
Isn't ThePirateBay's attempt to buy Sealand for this purpose good enough?
Remember that Total Information Awareness plan? (Score:2)
Well it's called google, and now they want to be immune from laws.
I don't think they could legally be allowed to abscond with our data.
oh wait, according to the eula, they own our data, right?
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I know this is thinking way ahead, but that prospect opens up a whole new can of worms. IMHO, I think I'd rather have companies answering to governments (depending on the government of course), but that's just me.
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I guess BlackWATER would be up to the task ;)
Re:Company navy? Examples? (Score:5, Interesting)
East India Company [wikipedia.org]
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But several countries (Brazil [webpronews.com] and USA [bbc.co.uk] to name 2 cases) required Google to give their user's data to government agencias, or to censor [wikipedia.org] content to comply with local laws.
"Don't be evil" looks like an ok policy. But following law is good or evil? and what if that law (or at least the people behind it) is e
Re:Remember that Total Information Awareness plan? (Score:5, Funny)
Follow the law is neither good or evil. It's being lawful, which is the opposite of chaotic. That being said, as long as you're not a paladin, you don't have to worry about laws that aren't good.
HARRRRRR (Score:3, Funny)
I can't wait until they start burying pirated DVDs and stolen WoW cards in the islands on the coast of New England. Just imagine a bunch of digital pirates raiding an off-shore data center. Hilarious.
No, I haven't had my coffee this morning, not yet.)
Cool... like sealand (Score:2, Interesting)
It's situated on an old abandoned British island fortress from WWII
Umm no they are not. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a bad dupe at best.
From what I heard was that Google was thinking of putting these in ports as mobile data centers.
Putting them off shore would cause more problems than it would solve.
1. Power. Wave power? Not with a barge. You might get a small part of you power from waves but not a lot.
2. Bandwidth. Fiber is fast everything else is slow. Running a fiber line out to a barge is iffy at best.
3. Weather.
Now if you could put one on say an offshore drilling rig that might work. If you used stranded natural gas for power and sea water for cooling it might make a little sense.
wave power (Score:5, Interesting)
can be done with rolling seas..
You send something to the sea floor and secure it
the raising of the whole ship based on wave motion can drive a flywheel..... the displacement of the ship generates a LOT of power....
418 - Server becalmed... (Score:3, Funny)
See "HTTP status codes": http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html [w3.org]
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What the hell do you think runs between AUSTRALIA AND THE REST OF THE WORLD?
Christ, there are special ships to lay under-sea cables (one used to port in Newcastle where I used to live), it's not like it's a mammoth task. Start feed at shore... pilot boat until you get to anchored barged... plug in.
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You could get around the Weather issue but having the data center submerge during storms
Thinking about it, submerging the datacenter all of the time (assuming it's unmanned) could have lots of benefits.
You would need to make the hull significantly stronger but assuming it's unmanned, there is nothing onboard which needs oxygen thus making the a submergable design much easier.
Which gives me another idea, flood th
I'm curious (Score:2)
Should be interesting.
Re:I'm curious (Score:5, Funny)
if they have any plans to deal with corrosive salts from the oceans?
They're breeding a dolphin/deer hybrid to swim around the facility and lick off the salt.
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Interesting concept (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose that could be offset against energy/cooling costs and ground rent, but ... I'm pretty sure that in terms of square feet, a yacht costs more than an apartment.
Manpower (Score:2, Insightful)
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Sounds like a chapter out of Slashdot... (Score:4, Informative)
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Slashdot has chapters? How can I join one?
today the oceans... (Score:3, Interesting)
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What a summary (Score:4, Insightful)
[..] but I wonder how they plan to get a bandwidth pipe large enough and still be reliable.
I don't think a pipe on the bottom of the ocean is your biggest concern when you put hundreds of thousands of computers on a man made island, exposed to possible tsunamis and hurricanes.
And while we're at it, have they thought of the possibility of terrorist attacks? If they're outside any jurisdiction, they also have no military power to protect them from planes, boats, subs and whatnot.
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Interesting line of inquiry!
Maybe they will build an armed protection fleet, which would make Google the first military-capable corporation outside of mercenary "consultancies"(i.e.: Blackwater). This all sounds too Shadowrun (v1) for me, and at the same time plausible.
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> which would make Google the first military-capable corporation outside of mercenary "consultancies"
With the exception of the British East India Company, which raised an army of 24,000 within India and which maintained the ``Honourable East India Company's Marine'' of warships. As well as protecting trade against pirates they engaged regular French and Portugese units to ``discourage'' trading in Company areas.
In 1830 the Marine became ``Her Majesty's Indian Navy'' which later formed the cadre of
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That will be solved with the new (still in beta) Google Navy, where if you'd like you can join their private military service for one year, and in return get access to special 'Friend of Google' restriction-lifting on disk space and bandwidth.
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Blackjack. And hookers.
how about orbiting data satellites? (Score:3, Interesting)
International Waters?!? (Score:5, Informative)
Erm, considering that national boundaries extend 12 miles from the mainland, that's hardly international.
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Erm, considering that national boundaries extend 12 miles from the mainland, that's hardly international.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_waters [wikipedia.org]
0-12 = territorial waters
12-24 = contiguous waters
24-200 = exclusive economic zone
200-?? = seabed of the continental shelf
International waters technically start 24 nautical miles out, but not if you're fishing or doing any other kind of business.
Google Navy (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, because cruise liners (Score:2)
Pirates. (Score:2)
Yeah right (Score:2)
I've heard they will be using the barges to anchor the space elevator too.
While I'm sure Google are looking into this I can't see it happening anytime soon. It's hard enough to run a massive data centre on land let alone run one that is bobbing up and down on the ocean all the time. I can't believe for one minute that this is the cheapest thing that would work.
In reality I imagine this is just an idea that was mooted and a couple of guys have looked into the feasibility to it. If you're as big as Google you
There is no such thing (Score:5, Informative)
as 'outside government jurisdiction'. A ship HAS to be registered and carry the flag of SOME nation, and it will be subject to the laws of that country. So a ship is no more or less outside the law than if you built your data center in that country.
Supposing someone has a ship which is NOT registered anywhere, then it is essentially 'fair game'. If say the US didn't like what you're doing they can just sail on up and do whatever they want with you. They could certainly board and seize any such vessel, after all who's going to object? In theory there might be some construction of maritime law that provides some protections, but without a government capable of objecting you're basically SOL.
So, there would be no consideration on Google's part of evasion of law. Possibly a way to choose a regulatory regime you like, but that's about it. Plus remember any large corporation is pretty much held hostage to its investors, insurance requirements, financing, and ultimately to whatever nations it has substantial business interests in.
Actually, thinking about it more... (Score:2)
The more likely people you'd want to be legally protected against wouldn't be say the US govt, it would be people that might not like what you're doing. International waters, privacy laws? What privacy laws? Nice safe place to do people's dirty work for them and never have to answer for it.
Anyway, as someone else pointed out, these things would be docked in a port. Frankly I think they'll find it would make just as much sense to just put up a building next to the ocean...
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That's true, but just as countries offering flags of convenience (Liberia, Cambodia) are happy to do away with other hassles shipowners don't like (taxes, safety regulations, inspections) I'm sure they'd be willing to accommodate Google's needs in the very unlikely event that this happens.
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The downsid
Even smarter (Score:2)
Cobra Island... (Score:2)
Energy saving (Score:2)
You can get some energy from the wave, but believing this is going to be cost efficient against, say, buying it from the grid is a bit ridiculous. No they won't save anything on energy doing that.
If they do save something, it's at most the cost of transporting energy from offshore to onshore, as any other saving would be arbitraged away.
Getting data and money off the hands of criminal organizations (aka governments) is a much more interesting consequence.
Re-Run the "Pirate" Poll (Score:3, Funny)
Massive overstatement (Score:5, Insightful)
Google has pending plans...
Nonsense. Google has a patent application. Which means that someone, somewhere, inside Google had this nifty idea, and a patent search thought it might be original. In corporations these days, the standing instructions are that if an idea is patentable, patent it - even if it is stupid or appears unworkable. This idea may be no more than bullshit round the water cooler.
Corporations want to build up a big patent portfolio. Financial types see that as good, which ups the stock price. And they want lots of patents in their pocket for when you get to a patent shoot-out (or to be so dangerous that one is pre-empted. The idea is that when someone accuses you of infringing a patent, you dump a huge pile of patents on the table and say "I bet you're infringing one of these".
So this article is a massive hype from a straw in the wind. Google is always thinking about datacentres, and this is a patent on an original, if not vary practical, thought.
Bandwidt may be easier than suspected. (Score:4, Informative)
They only have to go 12 miles, line of site. So say they go 20 for good measure. There are plenty of very high bandwidt solutions for that. Or they can run fiber. Of course whatever country their trunk lies in might have more than a wee bit of leverage with regard to how they conduct business and to whom taxes are paid.
Good news, bad news (Score:5, Interesting)
The bad news: They use the UK spelling ("data centre") in the link, and don't notice the 404s.
Worse news: The Times story get Slashdotted, and all those readers can't find your site.
Live and learn. Now we own datacentreknowledge.com as well. If anyone was actually looking, our link is below.
Its been done before (Score:4, Funny)
Why doesn't Google just buy Sealand?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand [wikipedia.org]
Seasteading, Patri Friedman (Score:3, Interesting)
Once upon a time there was a family of economists.
This included Rose Friedman, her brother what's his name, her husband Milton Friedman, their kids David and Susan, and David's kid Patri Freidman.
The general theme of their work is that economies spontaneously organize, instead of being created and managed by governments or god.
Milton won the Nobel Prize, David wrote the groundbreaking "The machinery of freedom",and Patri, well Patri's thing is seasteading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patri_Friedman [wikipedia.org]
Until quite recently, Patri worked for google.
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I'm not sure pirates would be much of a problem. My guess is they would probably anchor some where off the USA and European coast, just in international water. I can't see that many pirates operating in those waters.