Some pretty incredible new features of Google+ Photos today that will probably be burying Picasa once and for all. Using their algorithms, they will enhance and help sort photos saving time and energy with the net result being incredible photo albums.
Google isn’t slowing down investing in new data center operations around the world. Back in January we heard that it is expanding its Berkley County data center in South Carolina with an additional $600 million investment bringing the project up to $1.2 billion total. Today, Associated Press reports that Google is set to invest $390 million in a new expansion of its European data center in Belgium.
Internet search giant Google says it is investing 300 million euros ($390 million) to expand its continental European data center. Google Inc. said Wednesday it will upgrade the facility in Belgium to meet growing demand for its online services
Back in October of last year Google opened its data center doors to all with a new project dubbed “Where the internet lives” that gives anyone a unique behind the scenes look at its facilities responsible for handling 20 billion web pages indexed per day, 3 billion daily searches, and free mail to 425 million Gmail users.
According to a report from the Economic Times, new data centers in Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong are set to bring more speed to Google’s services for many areas. Construction on these data center sites began in 2011 at the sum of $300 million, and, according to today’s report, they are pegged to bring a 30 percent speed increase to Google services for neighboring regions. The Singapore facility is expected to go up in the next few months, while the Taiwan is pegged for the second half. No timetable has been given on the Hong Kong facility.
As an Internet-relying company, one big focus area for Google is speed. The new data centers are going to hopefully bring more speed to areas that normally aren’t as fast. Lalitesh Katragadda, head of product at Google India, explained: “Internet connectivity speed in India is not very high. These data centres will be crucial to this market due to its proximity.” Outside of Asia, Google has seven other data centers across the world. Several are in the U.S., with one each in Finland, Belgium, and Ireland as well. [Economic Times via TNW]
Google is doing something today that it has never done before, allowing the public to go behind the scenes at its various data centers. They are the same data centers Greenpeace recently praised for its “comprehensive energy reduction plan.” It is also the machine behind the 20 billion web pages indexed per day, 3 billion daily searches, and free mail to 425 million Gmail users. Apart from a few journalists who actually received tours of the data center, the rest of us will be limited to a new website Google has just dubbed “Where the Internet Lives” (above we get an in-depth video tour from CBS News).
The site includes a collection of photos (some of which are above) from Connie Zhou, for each of Google’s data centers including: Berkley County (SC), Council Bluffs (Iowa), The Dalles (Oregon), Douglas County (Georgia), Hamina (Finland), Lenoir (North Carolina), Mayes County (Oklahoma), and St. Ghislain (Belgium). The site also contains photos and captions for Google employees working in the various data centers. You can even walk right in the front door of the Lenoir, NC data center using StreetView for a virtual tour: Read more
Google executives are now on-stage for the second day of Google I/O to announce Compute Engine—its full-featured contender against Amazon and Microsoft’s cloud-computing services.
Google Senior Vice President Urz Holzle revealed the Infrastructure platform allows any sized businesses with large computing requirements to run applications on Google data center servers. Computer Engine also features multiple storage options with expansive connectivity to end-users.
It already beta tested with customers, as the Institute for Systems Biology, for instance, applied it to a Genome Explorer app. Holzle even demonstrated the ISB genome explorer running on 600,00 cores, but he noted there are 771,886 cores available to the app.
Google continues to dance around China with the news today that it is constructing a US$100 million, 15-hectare (37.07-acre) Data Center in Taiwan.
Google plans to complete the data center in 1-2 years and is expected to create 5-20 full-time jobs and a number of part-time jobs. By locating in Taiwan, Google will be close to the Chinese Mainland without falling under the laws of ‘Communist’ China which could theoretically sieze data if the data center were located within its borders.
Update: Reuters adds that Google will be building out Singapore and Hong Kong data centers as well.
Another Google data center video from this year below: Read more
