New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Google rumoured to start floating data centers
http://mashable.com/2013/10/25/google-floating-data/
I wonder if this has something to do with NSA and if they will be owned by google and not by some out of control subsidiary in some island state. If google manages to backhaul tons of traffic there, preferably encrypted, we may have the beginning of a free web with less pollution.
Not that I trust google not to give my data away, but the example could be followed by other people not under NSA control,even though google holds the patent for that.
What do you think ?
Comments
Wow....
coming soon: physically offshore services.
I can understand it being cheaper to run than a standard data centre, but there's no way they will be escaping NSA surveillance. Google will simply make the rest of their business a target by US government if they try to hide traffic.
Google can sail away into the sunset as far as I am concerned... this doesn't make them any more trustworthy.
No, but others might copy the idea.
It is also possible google was strong-armed by the government to spy on people, as they were in china.
We will see how this will develop, but I think they have some plans with it.
It's a neat idea actually, cooling comes for free from the Ocean. Only communication could become a problem if there is a storm and the fiber cables break. But i am sure they have thought about this already.
Or it could sink or be sunk.
I'm just waiting for a server literally in a Cloud.
IMO, in mid-Atlantic would be a better location, can draw cables from both shores, sit on the equator int he calm area with no storms get a cable from africa, one from miami, one from brazil, one from portugal and you have everyone but asia directly connected.
I dont get it surely it makes no commercial sense as you could do the water cooling anywhere with a lake or near the sea. Location has never stopped NSA or GHCQ in the pass why would this?
I doubt they would put it in the middle of the ocean. More likely it will be somewhere near the shore, where it would be too expensive to build a data center on land. Like near Manhattan maybe?
The land is not free and where is very cheap they need to get power and fiber needing a lot of authorizations and agreements too.
Also, you cant just camp near a lake and start pump in and out water, environmental agencies will not like that, from many points of view it might be cheaper to be in the middle of the ocean, linking a few cables will also be a good idea from some points of vies and placing it on the equator makes sure no storms will "rock the boat".
Location didnt stop those because they can bully any country, almost, but it would be hard to convince Poseidon they need to snoop around and raid servers in a floating DC they will have to hack into and social-engineer or pay people working there to give them access the way it should be done in the first place they are secret services, ffs, not a bunch of bureaucrats that are only sending papers asking for data or checking some computers linked into some DCs.
About time we start invading/living on the ocean too.
I see this as nothing more then google flexing their rather large pockets. Although their may be some hidden motive here, I don't really think so. Every few months google shits out a new out of the box idea for no reason other then it hasn't already been done and they have the money to do it.
Google is a business like any other, if the NSA were to apply pressure to get information from them, they would do so regardless of where the datacenter is.
You are right there, however they can make a company in vanuatu or even Russia or Brazil and register the DC on it's name.
From the legal point of view would be a different jurisdiction but as we know, NSA couldn't care less about laws and even constitutions.
Its called project loon
http://www.google.com/loon/
No loon is something entirely different. Those are balloons they're planning on putting over countries with little or no internet access.
This is a giant ship in the ocean. Think of it as a man-made island.
I don't even know how you can make the connection between Loon and this.. they're like.. as oppposite as they can be.
Sounds pretty cool. This could be the final solution for the pirate bay or all warez and torrent sites in general.
I'd think it's more to do with tax than data snooping, international waters/airspace isn't going to be subject to tax.
Google might have some of their own technical reasons though.
There are stock/forex traders that set up servers in unusual locations to get a few milliseconds advantage in the thousands of automated trades they do. They can make more profit from price discrepancies when they can push their trades through with less latency.
and possibly earthquake and fire survivabilty.
Already done that. Back when radio and telegraph was the only fast way to communicate the old and new continent, they use ships as radio and
telegraph relay stations.