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June 30, 2006

Project 02: Google's Secret Data Center


Google builds a big data center 130 miles north of Columbia River and The Dalles in Oregon. "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" reported New York Times earlier this month.

Danny Hillis, a supercomputing pioneer thinks that "Google has constructed the biggest computer in the world, and it's a hidden asset". Google already has 450,000 servers all around the world, and that more than any other company.

"Google is like the Borg," said Milo Medin, a computer networking expert. "I know of no other carrier or enterprise that distributes applications on top of their computing resource as effectively as Google."

The Oregon data center, code-named Project 02, is kept under a veil of secrecy, although a computing center as big as two football fields is hard to hide. The location supplies cheap fiber and that's essential for Google's plans.

{ Photo by Daniel Terdiman / CNET News.com, where you can find other pictures }

11 comments:

  1. I believe this data center is being constructed in Quincy, Washington

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  2. ""Google is like the Borg," said Milo Medin, a computer networking expert. "I know of no other carrier or enterprise that distributes applications on top of their computing resource as effectively as Google.""


    Are they really the greatest, if all they're doing is going around bying everyone.

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  3. >I believe this data center is being >constructed in Quincy, Washington

    Construction is in The Dalles, Oregon. It actually says this above

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  4. Google is in The Dalles. It is not 130 miles to the north.

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  5. The first line in the article should read; Google builds a big data center 483 yards west of the Columbia River in The Dalles, Oregon.
    45°37'27.70"N
    121°12'25.33"W

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  6. Why on the Oregon side of the River and not Washington? I see where there is a defunct Aluminum Plant in Goldendale on the Washington side (40 miles east of this facility in The Dalles) and a local businessman has approached Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon about converting the facility into a massive data center, powered by a utility scale solar farm as well as wind power. He was turned down flat because these technology companies, while all professing green activities and put out PR statements about their carbon reducing activities in reality are just as dirty as any industry requiring massive amounts of power.

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  7. I think that this might be connected to their "Netbook Google Chrome OS" (coming later), which is supposed to rely heavily on online applications. If they use these "supercomputers" as processors and storage for (a heavily improved version of) Google Docs, they could make a lot of money off of advertising, while weakening Microsoft's 90% share of the loot on Netbook OSs.

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  8. the privicy policy change.

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  9. Do you think that all of this is to make Google more useful for the NRO/NSA/CIA..?

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  10. This comment has been removed by the author.

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