"Google has patents on the built-in battery design,"<p>In 1992 we built PCs for a low noise astronomy camera with the PSU replaced by a 12V car battery to avoid the noise of a switchmode PSU
this video<p>Google container data center tour
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRwPSFpLX8I" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRwPSFpLX8I</a><p>provide even more details on the cooling system etc.<p>and yep that's NOT an april fool
Fascinating! That's an off-the-shelf SLA (sealed lead acid) battery like many UPS/alarm systems use, which need replacement at least every 3 years (or much sooner if they are deeply discharged).<p>But I would happily pay $2, even $5 more for that feature on a motherboard.
Yep. This is old news. But more recently other companies have also decided to implement on-board batteries on their custom servers, most notably Facebook:<p><a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/11/27/should-servers-come-with-batteries/" rel="nofollow">http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/11/27/shoul...</a><p>And yes, this story was real, despite the April 1 date. I attended the event, and saw the server. It definitely seemed odd to schedule a technology unveiling on April 1, but Google apparently launched Gmail on April 1 as well.
So given the amount of research that Google pump into getting the best components for the job, are we to take it that all their testing has concluded Hitachi hard disks are better than the alternatives?<p><a href="http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.html" rel="nofollow">http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.html</a>
"Google has patents on the built-in battery design, "but I think we'd be willing to license them to vendors," Hoelzle said."<p>Can you patent a device you use as part of your business but don't sell? I don't think you could get away with calling it a business practice, and I don't think you could get away with protecting a patent on a device you never try to market.