rant whine 'splain espouse: Google's plans for their dark fiber

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Google's plans for their dark fiber

Technology pundit Robert X. Cringely believes Google has the WalMart business model in mind in its strategy to buy up dark fiber.

"...in one of Google's underground parking garages in Mountain View...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 5,000 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..."

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