According to a report this morning from The Wall Street Journal, Google has purchased 1,210 acres of land just south of Tesla’s Gigafactory near Reno, Nevada. It doesn’t look like there’s anything to note about the purchase in terms of its relation to Tesla, however, besides its physical proximity…
Very few people are allowed inside one of Google’s data centers, but you can at least take a virtual tour thanks to a 360° video. We should warn that the narration is basically just one extended plug for the company’s technology, but it’s fun to take a look around.
The 360° view is available on both mobile and desktop platforms …
This is kind of humorous. At Amazon’s AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas last week, Amazon Web Services Vice President of Infrastructure Jerry Hunter accidentally showed a generic picture of one of Google’s data centers. This is the kind of minor mishap that usually goes completely unnoticed, but not this time. Google’s Urs Hölzle came out on Google+ late yesterday to point out the mistake, taking the opportunity to brag about Google Cloud Platform as “the world’s best infrastructure”…
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If you send email with Gmail, host your school papers on Google Drive, or watch YouTube videos, you’ve taken advantage of one or more of Google’s many data centers. Today, Google has announced that it’s opening up its 14th site globally, but they’re planning to do something interesting — they’re planning to rework the existing infrastructure of the soon-to-be shut down Widows Creek coal power plant in Alabama…
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Greenpeace today released an update to its “Clicking Clean: A Guide to Building the Green Internet” report, and while Apple continues to lead for renewable energy efforts, Google once again increases its score thanks to new initiatives.
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Google has been using artificial intelligence for a wide range of tasks, ranging from delivering search results to speech recognition, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that Google’s latest AI product was figuring out how to improve the energy efficiency of the very servers used to do all that other stuff.
A Google blog entry spotted by Engadget describes how a Google engineer used his 20 percent time to apply machine learning to predict the real-time energy efficiency of its data centers. Google uses a measure known as Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE): a ratio of total power used to power actually used for computing. In simple terms, if cooling used as much power as computing, the PUE would be 2. The closer to 1 Google can get, the more efficient the energy usage.
Google has already got its PUE down to 1.12 – about twice as efficient as a typical data center – but is using the AI project to try to further reduce the number. By using machine learning to predict the impact of variables like outside air temperature, Google can tweak the setup to minimize power usage.
The days of self-aware machines grow ever closer …
Google’s proposed data center (red icon) location in the Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate in Kowloon, next to a golf course.
News that Google was building new data centers in Hong Kong have circulated since the beginning of the year. Google has, however, now decided to cancel the project in Hong Kong. The company blames real estate acquisition issues as the reason for the decision. It isn’t immediately apparent if Google’s contentious relationship with the Chinese Government is to blame or if Honk Kong’s operation costs were at issue. It was reported in September 2011 that Google had already acquired 2.7 hectares of land n the Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate in Kowloon which was expected to employ 25 full-time Googlers by this year…
The mysterious barge that appeared in San Francisco Bay has been confirmed by multiple sources to be Google’s first foray into retail space, reports CBS.
First rumored to be a data center, CBS first suggested a week ago that it could be the retail space we’ve been predicting since February, and is now stating this as fact – though suggesting it may be aimed at an exclusive clientele.
Google’s mysterious floating barge on San Francisco Bay will feature luxury showrooms and a party deck for the tech giant to market Google Glass and other gadgets to invitation-only clients, multiple sources told KPIX 5.
It’s not clear whether it’s just the upper entertainment deck that is reserved for VIP guests or the whole structure, but it appears the structure isn’t fixed: it’s a giant Transformer …
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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]
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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:
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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.
While Greenpeace’s “How Clean is Your Cloud” report had not so great things to say about Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft’s use of coal energy in their data centers, Google was praised for its “comprehensive energy reduction plan”. The organization is urging consumers to contact the companies to convince them to change their approach to powering the cloud and read the 50-page report to learn more.
“Google has been the most open in the industry about the importance of increasing not only energy efficiency within the sector, but also the need to move our energy sources to renewable energy… Google has a comprehensive energy reduction plan that has resulted in its data centers using half the energy of the industry standard… Google’s commitment to using renewable energy as much as possible has set the bar for the industry.”
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:
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