Is Google building a floating data center in San Francisco Bay?

In the bay of San Francisco, a barge was found, on which an unknown object is being built, which seems to be owned by Google. Experts believe that this may be the first floating data center, the construction of which has long been expressed by Google.

Cnet journalists conducted a thorough investigation and obtained indirect evidence that the barge with the design belongs to Google.

First, there are documents that a huge hangar number 3 on the Gulf Coast was leased by Google and a company By and Large LLC. For example, here is Timothy Brandon's LinkedIn official representative.
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After the lease of the hangar, numerous guards were set up around the perimeter in order to securely hide from outside eyes what is being built inside.



In the place where the water begins in satellite photography, now there is a huge construction. Apparently, the fact that they began to build in the hangar, later lowered into the water. The photo shows a lot of containers that have moved to the barge. In the windows you can see these containers, they tried to hide well inside.



The ship itself, 76 m long, 22 m wide and 5 m deep, was built in 2011, has registration number BAL 0010 and is owned by By and Large LLC.

Experts say that the containers themselves and their method of placement resemble a data center. In particular, the director of the company Cargotecture , which is engaged in the production of non-standard containers, explains that when chained together, containers form corridors in which it is very convenient to arrange racks with servers. His words were confirmed by other experts who say that this could be a data center.

Interestingly, back in 2008, Google put forward the idea of ​​creating floating data centers (data barges), which are powered by wave energy .

Such ships anchor at a distance of up to 11 km from the coast, where standard float-operated generator sets are scattered over the waves (in the picture to the right).



Power generation using wave energy is a rather innovative idea that has only recently begun to be applied in hydropower.

Placing data centers on water allows you to automatically solve one of the main problems - the method of accumulation and removal of electricity. Here it does not need to take anywhere. It is consumed directly at the site of "mining". In addition, the problems of heat removal from the servers here are solved perfectly simply, because the global ocean is the best source for water cooling. It is enough to put simple pumps.

Experts are pretty good about the invention of Google. The author of the largest data center blog on the Web in 2008 said it was "a truly innovative, non-standard idea."

In 2009, Google received a patent for floating data centers of this type. If the experiment is successful, then soon a whole fleet may appear under the flag of Google in the ocean.