This is one of the more interesting possibilites I’ve heard as to where Google is heading.
Google-Mart
The probable answer lies in one of Google’s underground parking garages in Mountain View. There, in a secret area off-limits even to regular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn’t just any shipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data center. Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We’re talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid.
It’s nice to see Cringely III NOT talking about NerdTV! It’s become an obsession with him.
But I found one small error (other than the spelling error): “Your data never goes away unless you erase it.”
Your data will never really go away and there will be no means of you to erase it. Do you really think Google deletes that sort of stuff?! By that I mean wipes the hard drives space clean on those particular drives holding your data? Your data will almost certainly always be there, even if you can’t get to it yourself.
Just something to think about if you use these future apps. If you happened to be sued and find the other side subpoenaing Google, you’ll know why.
“This is the voice of Colossus, the voice of world control.”
I say we just hope that Google will be benevolent dictators.
Jeffry, I, for one, welcome our new giant processing and storage grid creating overlords.
If they do what Cringely is saying they will, Microsoft should just go ahead and give up. Yahoo too.
Don’t panic.
This is a good thing. It will force the courts to confront the differences that make normal copyright and patent law cause problems when applied to computer and network tech.
Of course, they’ll probably make it worse.
Sounds great, but it would require a couple shipping containers full of cooling to keep 5000 opterons from melting.
Joe, The cooling wouldn’t be an issue. Water cooling would keep 5000 just as cool as one. The problem is that failure on a normal PC ruins a couple of processors and a motherboard at most. While failure on this box sets you back a couple of million. If kept in a refrigeration chamber you could give yourself a few seconds for shutdown. Now all bets are off if they run at full power. You wouldn’t have time to shutdown before the cores in the middle melted. Thats why the shipping container thing is probably just marketing talk. Spread them around a walk-in freezer keeping the chips about four inches apart, and cool them with a good anti-freeze mix. Prototypes like that already exist using Pent. 3 processors (a thousand of them if I remember).
I, for one, am looking forward to working harmoniously with our new Google overlords!