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

Great article. It's nice to see journalists do actual investigative work, even if it is for something like this. Today's "journalism" seems to be all link-bait opinion pieces mixed in with copy-pastes from twitter.

There are actually 4 &quot;vessels&quot;. Look at the names -- using binary :)<p><pre><code> BAL0001 BY AND LARGE LLC * * C &amp; C MARINE &amp; REPAIR LLC 2010 Freight Barge 2164.0 249.6 BAL0010 BY AND LARGE LLC * * C &amp; C MARINE 2011 Passenger Barge (Inspected) 2520.0 260.1 BAL0011 BY AND LARGE LLC * * C &amp; C MARINE 2011 Passenger Barge (Inspected) 2520.0 260.1 BAL0100 BY AND LARGE LLC * * C &amp; C MARINE 2012 Freight Barge 2164.0 249.6</code></pre>

Something similar is being outfitted in Portland, ME.<p><a href="http://www.pressherald.com/news/Clues_emerging_about_mystery_structure_on_barge_in_harbor_.html?searchterm=barge" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pressherald.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;Clues_emerging_about_mystery...</a><p>The OP is a much better article (The Press Herald is garbage).<p>My original guess for the barge-building in Portland was a ocean-based prison facility for the government to use for interrogations. But it&#x27;s seeming like the floating data center idea is much more likely.

My first thought: &quot;Finally I&#x27;m interested in applying at Google, if it involves using my captain&#x27;s license!&quot;<p>My second thought: &quot;Meh, the job interview probably involves writing a breadth-first search algorithm to search for known pirates in the graph of nearby ports.&quot;

The middle of the ocean could be a a very high margin location for IaaS hosting.<p>Due to speed-of-light delays, some of the ideal locations for hosting high-speed trading arbitrages are in the middle of the ocean. Being half way between two exchanges would allow you to notice a small difference in price of some commodity in two different exchanges and buy and sell microseconds before your competitors on the mainland know that there&#x27;s an arbitrage opportunity. See <a href="http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/action/stocktrade.cfm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.physicscentral.com&#x2F;explore&#x2F;action&#x2F;stocktrade.cfm</a>

I was Googling to find what a boat-based wave-powered generator would look like, and I found this interesting diagram:<p><a href="http://www.greenpatentblog.com/2011/12/08/fraunhofers-mobile-wave-energy-harvester-barges-in/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.greenpatentblog.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;12&#x2F;08&#x2F;fraunhofers-mobile...</a>

Finally, something with better bandwidth and worse latency than Andy Tanenbaum&#x27;s station wagon.<p>&gt; Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Computer Networks, 4th ed., p. 91

<p><pre><code> Google was granted a patent in 2009 for a floating data center </code></pre> Sigh, there is a <i>patent</i> on floating data centers? For fuck&#x27;s sake...

How does the data get to&#x2F;from the platform? Microwaves? Can that work from a slightly moving platform?<p>My wacky guess would have been off-shore offices for employees that can&#x27;t get H1Bs.

Very interesting...<p>Any chance that this will mean the Govt can&#x27;t subpoena data from this data center if it is floating far enough from the US coast? Or does it not matter because clearly the US will be the closest harbor?

So it appears as though Google is looking towards a future where they are an independent country, or at the very least free from regulation, visa-a-vis Seasteading.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Seasteading</a>

I hope they fit it with sub-surface portholes and webcams.<p>The article keeps saying &quot;huge&quot;, but really that&#x27;s tiny for a ship. Google could buy an old cruise liner and fit several of those inside. Or maybe Google is going to buy more little ships and plonk one of these in each?<p>I hope that they have adequate security, because all that gold and copper is worth stealing for some people.

Somebody told them about docker and this is what they did....

Maybe Google will put pressure on the city to upgrade the island&#x27;s power grid, which has had serious reliability issues in recent years: <a href="http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/treasure-island-endures-yet-another-power-outage/Content?oid=2540870" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfexaminer.com&#x2F;sanfrancisco&#x2F;treasure-island-endur...</a>

This will get lost in the rest of the comments here, and the article was comprehensive, but:<p>A friend of mine just got back from Treasure Island (she works as a stewardess on millionaires boats), and hung out with a lot of the guys working on this. This is definitely Google&#x27;s doing, and she was told that it is indeed a data-centre, but that&#x27;s all the info she got.

another cool thing about floating data centers in california is they&#x27;re pretty much earthquake proof... built in shock absorbers (aka water).<p>You can probably charge a premium for easily accessible highly secure data I would imagine.<p>... assuming megalodon isn&#x27;t still around

Reminds me [1]. Gmail like AI breaks loose and uses fully automated floating data centers. Highly recommend.<p>[1] book named &quot;Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears:

I hope it is a floating data center. If not, it is a fun detective type article.

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a barge filled with hard drives.

Today we went sailing. I took ~62 higher res jpg pictures of this area.<p>You can see these here: <a href="http://tinyurl.com/floatingcontainers" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tinyurl.com&#x2F;floatingcontainers</a>

It&#x27;s startup&#x2F;incubator space: <a href="http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/off/4148978964.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sfbay.craigslist.org&#x2F;sfc&#x2F;off&#x2F;4148978964.html</a>

Maybe this is just so their data centers can be movable between cities so they can negotiate better tax agreements and power contracts.

Actual original reporting, wow, sadly unusual these days for any publication. My respect for CNET might be resurrected.

Actually it just struck me this might be part of Googles DR plan for California getting hit by the big one

I can see it already.<p>In a dystopian future, when the world as we know it is covered in water, one mythical ship traverses the oceans, powered by stratosphere kites or nuclear power. Nobody knows where it&#x27;s from.<p>All we know is that many years ago, it became sentient.<p>And its name is Google.

Anyone consider what the real estate &amp; taxes savings will be with this? For high demand areas where you&#x27;d like to set up a data center, something offshore might save a fortune in land costs and property taxes alone.

With movable data centers, Google can easily move them across oceans, as popularity and usage of different Google services inevitably shifts across countries over time, in order to be closer to wherever their users are to reduce network latency.<p>For example an &quot;Orkut data center&quot; would have been very useful to Google in 2008, when they announced they were moving its operations to Brazil because somewhat unpredictably this is where their core user base developed the most: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Orkut</a>

A massive floating data-centre out in international waters would be a pretty powerful protection against governmental interference in your business. Well, except for the military kind.

Seems pretty telling to me, with the patent and coffee shop cashier testimonial.<p>I wonder how the hardware will hold up to the environmental harshnesses of the open water? Or even just sea spray...

Just enough leaks to conclude it&#x27;s a Google-owned project. Although I can&#x27;t offer an alternative explanation, I&#x27;m a bit skeptical in this post-Snowden world.

A datacenter in&#x2F;near SF doesn&#x27;t make much sense. Electricity there is just too expensive. And, no, the waves in the bay aren&#x27;t a solution.<p>I suppose you might build a datacenter there and then ship it to some third-world port where you don&#x27;t want to do construction.<p>While I love the idea of a gmail datacenter in international waters with automatic guns to deter boarders, that really wouldn&#x27;t fit Google&#x27;s current political strategy.

I believe this was literally Chapter 1 (ok, maybe chapter 2 or 3) of &quot;Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears&quot; [1]. Life imitates art, I guess? Or maybe that author is more prescient than I gave him credit for.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Avogadro-Corp-Singularity-Appears-ebook/dp/B006ACIMQQ" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Avogadro-Corp-Singularity-Appears-eboo...</a>

Can somebody explain the point behind the secrecy? What does Google have to gain by taking all these steps to hide they&#x27;re the ones building it?

<a href="http://www.subpartners.net/cables/apx-east.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.subpartners.net&#x2F;cables&#x2F;apx-east.html</a><p><a href="http://www.commsday.com/commsday-australasia/slatterys-radical-funding-plan-for-proposed-australia-singaporeus-cables" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.commsday.com&#x2F;commsday-australasia&#x2F;slatterys-radic...</a>

Just wondering what the effect of all the waste heat will be on (what&#x27;s left of) the Bay&#x27;s ecosystem.

Google uses Treasure Island for holiday parties, perhaps that&#x27;s what explains the presence of employees?

This floating data centers could be used for more privacy&#x2F;security. Very interesting article thanks.

Could this be a routing center for CC payments? That would be a very interesting tax evasion method...

It&#x27;s likely that this is a way to get around the visa limits the US is having. If you build a giant cruise ship and park it on the bay next to google then you can have engineers working near HQ without legally requiring them to have visas!

Sounds kinda like the fictional Arsenal Gear ship: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_%28weapon%29#Arsenal_Gear" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Metal_Gear_%28weapon%29#Arsenal...</a>

Could this be an attempt to skirt the rules and laws imposed by the US on our (Google&#x27;s) data? Would Google have to provide data under a warrant if said data is physically located in international waters?

<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alison-winfield-burns/rich-and-busy-potentate-e_b_3951340.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.huffingtonpost.com&#x2F;alison-winfield-burns&#x2F;rich-and...</a>

International waters, immune to NSA?<p>Also, does wave power really yield sufficient energy?

I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if it was a GoogleX project of some sort.

How would a data centre on a barge cope with constant motion (hurtful for cheap spinning discs?) and data link latency? Presumably cable doesn&#x27;t work well if the barge moves?

<i>&gt; putting data centers inside shipping containers is already a well-established practice.</i><p>Is this true? Does anyone know why? The article seems to assume it without saying why.

A place for those with no visa to the USA to work!

I can just see google hq now.<p>&quot;Boy that was quite a storm last night...oh wait...gmail just floated away and is halfway to hawai&#x27;i&quot;

It might be a NON-HULKING floating data center.

This could be part of Google&#x27;s Project Loon. Instead of building a data center in Africa why not ship one over.

It&#x27;s being built at the same hangar where they shot the Battlebots TV shows.

Bruce Sterling will love this.

Well looks like we&#x27;re going to need to Trevor to do some investigation.

Maybe they&#x27;re just trying to lay some underwater cable... to Japan

How do you get a patent for a &quot;floating data center&quot;..

That or a metal gear. My hopes are on the latter.

nice information regarding google building hulking floating data center.