Is Google building a hulking floating data center in SF Bay?

I've seen hundreds of report regarding the link between Google & NSA. Isn't that enough?

This is just not gossip. It's not about Sergey Brin's love affair.

This is about a piece of technology that is possibly built by Google.

You have a very broad definition of gossip.

> We still don't know how they steal our data.

Actually it feels to me like they're stealing it anyway they can... so if there is a legal recourse, I think it's safe to assume they've taken it, along with many illegal ones.

Don't you think that one of the interesting issues raised by a floating data center might be a jurisdictional one? Is it possible that google is actually considering putting some of their infrastructure beyond sovereign control? Maybe this isn't just gossip...

I actually think this is a pretty substantial find, not just gossip. They're moving on a really cool concept.

Sure worked for the NSA, didn't it?

That's really interesting. The article claimed the Google structure wasn't likely to be office-space, because there was little-to-no exterior-facing lighting, though. This project seems to have a lot of windows. Not the same thing?

Those stools...where do you put your knees??

I kind of doubt that these two names are related except that they both derive from the same common idiom.

I suspect the name may just be to confuse anyone trying to look into it. "By and Large" returns over 250 million results in Google. Anyone looking to find permits, job postings, or random government filings would need to dig through tons of unrelated cruft.

This is done pretty often for shell companies, they will have names like "Twisting River" or just "Investment Vehicle VII, LLC"

Noting that the domain byandlarge.com was registered in 1998 by a "domainer".

Interesting. The movie came out in 2008.

But the film concept dates to the mid 90's so most likely that concept was the first use of that name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E

It really depends on what you want to do.

If you want to raise capital and build a startup here, don't. Or, at least, do so but with your "real" headquarters in Boston, NY or CA.

There's a strong effort to try and get things going, but there's a definite lack of capital and the capital you can find in other places will send you a consistent message: "We don't want you in Maine, move here instead."

There are some opportunities around maritime businesses (logistics, mostly) and lots of incentives for trying to build small manufacturing and renewable energy businesses... but the school closest to Portland is looking to close its physics department and the state officials responsible for managing the incentive programs have proven multiple times that they cannot be trusted to develop long-term programs.

If you have or can develop a remote-work type position, it's a great place to live and work from (as long as you can get good, reliable bandwidth).

But if you want to start a software-focused startup ... honestly ... it's an uphill battle.

The "scene" is cool. There are local meetups, some small, some mid sized. Monktoberfest just drew quite the crowd. As the other commenter said, there ain't much for investment though, and the companies are a mix of web boutiques, large companies (Unum, Idexx, etc), and a startup here or there. I work remotely, which gives me the benefits of being in Portland while making a NYC salary, but even when I was working for a Portland firm I was still making a good wage.

Adding onto justinsteele and numbsafari ... I've been working remotely since 2007 because there aren't a ton of jobs up here except for large-shop Java and .net work, and that really wasn't for me. It's kinda surprising how many people live in Portland and work remotely, and it seems like I keep discovering more all the time. But as far as startups go, I think numbsafari nailed it. I worked for a smallish company back in the mid-2000s, and it's likely that things have changed, but back then the tech-related investors wanted you to move to Boston, and the local investors didn't really grasp how to value software - they were more interested in how many forklifts you had as collateral. :-/

But I do get the sense that things have improved a bit since then.

I live in Portland, I'll see if I can spot it tonight...

From the vessel listings above, I'd guess it will be BAL0011.

http://www.pressherald.com/news/Myserty_Portland_barge_and_S... is a more detailed Press Herald article, it says it's BAL 0011.

Or you can be sneaky. Put out some irresistable, yet covert job offers for pirates in the necessary ports, and see where the applications come from.

Just guessing here, but the geographical advantage probably requires a fiber link, which seems prohibitive in open ocean. Putting your ship in the right place probably doesn't improve your latency if you have to bounce signals off of satellites.

That was my first thought, too.

On the other hand there are probably cheaper ways to beat your competitors than crewing a boat, paying for fuel/electricity, havign a datacenter crew on board, dealing with the challenges of getting a high bandwidth signal hundred of miles off-shore, etc. Specifically you could invest in ever-faster custom processing in hardware or a lower latency connection will still make you faster than your competitors. You don't need to be as fast as possible, you only need to be a tiny bit faster than everyone else.

On the other hand, if someone can take advantage of economy of scale (by being a neutral provider to many brokers) and provide an advantage over everyone at a lower cost than the above options, then everyone would need to use it to compete effectively.

It's a fairly common (and silly) dismissal of any new effort that "if it worked, someone else would already be doing it".

From talking with a friend who's a retired stat arb quant, the fundamental idea is sound.

My guess for why people aren't doing it yet is that first, there are still untapped locations on land that are easier to get running (example: the Chicago to NY fiber run), and second getting the data to the ocean point isn't trivial.

I think if you want to look for early signaling of someone doing this, look for where telco folks route new fiber runs. If they take a longer path to go near one of the points in the paper I'd bet they're at least hedging for the possibility of using that fiber run for arbitrage.

Edit: a more mundane explanation may be that the arbitrage is so low margin that the payback time isn't practical vs the initial investment.

I think it's possible to build a platform, like an oil drilling platform, survivable in the middle of the ocean (against storms and rogue waves) and hook fiber into it by dropping fiber in extremely high-strength conduit (like oil drilling pipe) to the ocean floor and then across the ocean to continents.

I don't think the cost/benefit is acceptable considering more serviceable locations that already have fiber, like Hawaii in the Pacific. Operational costs for a floating platform are much higher, and fixing anything major would take days instead of hours.

What about DDoS attacks (N/A if these are private network links) or real pirate attacks?

Yeah, that's why I was trying to figure out how they would power it.

Diesel generators seem... unGoogley.

I'd be shocked if claim #1 wasn't "floating data center". They always start out super broad.

Last I checked, all those entities were firmly connected to the Earth's crust.

Wait, what? I think I missed this one

Wireless communication doesn't work that way. Its bandwidth is not proportional to the number of transceivers.

So, most likely Liberian or Panamanian law...

> So they can still subpeona data moving through the switch

Well if they weren't an american corporation they would be doing this anyway. Besides, perhaps the most important data wouldn't ever have to be transmitted into the country.

Its being built at an island in SF Bay. That doesn't mean its going to be operated there.

Patri only worked on prediction markets at google, so far as I know, and left to spend more time on Seasteading and related projects.

Source: he's a friend of a family member.

> It appears they want to save on real estate and cooling costs by having floating data centers.

Is this really that expensive that's still advantageous considering the costs of a barge + electricity + data link to the sea + fuel + maintenance ?

It's still in beta.

Tsunamis are not giant walls of water like what you see in disaster movies. They're more like an unending tide: the water just keeps rising until it floods the area. Anything floating loose on the water at the time is at risk of being carried inland, but is unlikely to be completely destroyed.

A floating data center barge anchored a mile offshore is as close as you can get to tsunami-proof. At worst, its connection to the mainland would be severed if the tsunami destroyed the local land-based telecom infrastructure. Any data located on the barge would still be intact until communications could be restored.

No more Hollywood movies for you. The only "tsunamis" with "waves" hundreds of feet high are created by cliffs or glaciers collapsing. And even then, the wave height is really the run-up against another cliff or mountain. Such waves can be dangerous to boats in confined waters, such as a bay. In the open ocean, tsunami waves are mostly harmless and even barely noticeable to boats. And all this is moot because the slip-strike motion of the San Andreas fault doesn't produce tsunamis that I've heard of.

just to slightly build on the other comments, I believe this barge is designed to be out from shore quite a way, if it was right up against the shore I could see this being an issue.

The wave of a tsunami remains under water, until it hits the coast and the water isn't as deep as the wave is high. If you are far enough away from the coast, a tsunami has no effect nor will you notice it unless you have the equipment necessary to detect it.

The worst thing a tsunami could do to a floating data center is break the internet connection, assuming a cable is used.

It's the opt-out village :).

It's Google Island!

www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/05/on-google-island/‎

I was referring to areas where real estate is extremely expensive, and data demands warrant close proximity thereto - such as San Francisco. Floating a data center on "free" water surface may be cheaper yet still have thick short data pipes to intended customers.

A completely new data center takes years to build and deploy.

Not really.

It's a similar idea but comparing Google putting it's resources behind a similar idea to something like Sealand is not really a fair comparison.

The outcome could be vastly different.

Ahem, (Unfortunately as a Brit) I think Tempora/GCHQ might be up there with the NSA.

Reminds me of the fake Apple company names and back stories when they were building the iPhone and had to meet with cellular companies. (I guess Steve Jobs was less recognizable back then?)

joezydeco: Your reply seems to be dead, I'm not sure why.

I think that's the same one the datacenterknowledge.com article I linked refers to though.

The newest Azure data center in Iowa(?) was going to be open air. Basically a pile of these containers in a field, with a big fence over it and a roof similar to a big car-port (no walls). They figured it was going to be better for cooling.

Satire aside. My point was the ridiculousness of it. What's next, patents covering putting data centers in space, under the sea or under stairs etc..