The New Heavy Metal :: Innovation in Software :: The Vagueware Blog
Paul Robinson links to a fascinating and appalling blueprint for Google’s new DataCentre.
Although the energy is being generated by hydro-electric (and they’re investing in greentech in a big way), Paul points out that the cost of Google’s business is masked by this hidden (or at least, obsfucated, powr consumption)
The blueprint’s annotations highlight the huge tax breaks and subsidies that were the payoff from intense lobbying by Google – so there is a significant taxpayer cost, to boot (pun unintended :-|
Tax breaks aside, Google seem to be making a significant effort to be ‘clean’ – at least on this datacentr (their others, not so).
The bigger problem lies with any of Google’s competitors (we’re looking at you, Microsoft) who are creating energy chomping datacentres in places that tend to turn a blind eye to carbon-fuel based energy, such as Russia.
When servers currently need a half watt of cooling for evry watt they produce, this really is the time for innovation.