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No, this does not appear at all. It appears they want to save on real estate and cooling costs by having floating data centers.

Google has owns so much real estate and immovable property in the US it is silly to suppose they are thinking of leaving the country just because they built a couple of barges.

> 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 ?

Not only is cold seawater usable for cooling, but the article mentions the feasibility of using the sea for power generation.

Consistent with this, too:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4334356/larry-page-wants-t...

And interestingly, Patri Friedman used to work at Google...

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.

Everyone's work on prediction markets at Google was a 20% project, so Patri would have had his main job doing something else.