[codex]

This is a strategic attack on Google. A proliferation of scalable data centers hurts Google a lot more than Facebook by enabling Google's competitors. Cheap computation matters much more to search engines than social networking sites.

[ssp]

It could be. I always thought that an interesting way to compete with Google would be to index the web and then sell map/reduce access to that index.

[neilk]

Because Google could never benefit from Facebook's designs too? Google does a lot of things bespoke, but now they have a model to compare with that is using more off-the-shelf tech. That can only help them in the buy-vs-build decision process.

I think you're going overboard in thinking that everything the big players do is about killing the other guy. Sometimes they just want to reduce costs. If you decide that part of your infrastructure isn't strategic to own, it always makes sense to be open.

[brownleej]

I'd say that efficient data servers are one of google's core competencies. Google does not benefit from having that commoditized.

[neilk]

I just don't like the phrasing. "We did a thing that Google does not substantially benefit from" == "We attacked Google" ?

[chopsueyar]

Well look who is commoditizing it, and it isn't Google.

[diegob]

A proliferation of scalable data centers could also enable the next generation of social networking sites ... I don't see why it's limited to helping Google's competitors and not Facebook's.

[whatusername]

Becuase Search is ultimately about technology, but Social is about the users.

If I was the only user of Google (and they had the same technology stack) then +1 aside - my experience would be the same as it is now. If I was the only user of facebook - what would be the point.

[diegob]

I'm sorry, but it seems like you're implying that search doesn't need users. Some of Google's ranking depends on analyzing search histories, so if you were the only user, the experience would be worse. That means that search is also about the users. Data center technology can benefit everybody, that's all I'm trying to say.

[lsc]

>Google's ranking depends on analyzing search histories, so if you were the only user, the experience would be worse.

I disagree. At this point, I believe that because of how big google is and because of how profitable gaming google is, getting good results, I believe that more than half of the work of finding relevant search results is filtering out the people attempting to game the search engine.

I mean, it is /possible/ that the help they get from user's search histories outweighs the massive amount of effort spammers put in to making google suck, but I doubt it.

I bet that things are much easier for a new search engine while they are small enough that it's not worth much time and effort to game the results.

>Data center technology can benefit everybody, that's all I'm trying to say.

This is true, but I believe what other users are likely saying is that google probably alrealdy has something as good or better than this.

Personally, I won't get excited until someone starts building out co-location centers that have efficent cooling. Nearly all co-location centers use mixed air, and most end up keeping the place much cooler than required, and they pass on those costs to me.

The thing is, for anyone who is big enough to take advantage of their data center design, this isn't particularly new. I mean, it's great they are sharing the documentation of how they did it... but that mostly helps the little guys, and the little guys can't really take advantage of it... we're stuck in co-location centers, like I said, with antiquated cooling designs.

The chassis designs, on the other hand, might be great for the little guys. Hell, I am not that far away from enough scale to job out the chassis to a metal shop, and the design would be a pretty big part of that cost, that facebook just reduced to zero. Thanks!

But the power savings on the chassis are very small compared to the power savings on the cooling/data center design.

[db42]

That is a good point, that you have raised. But I wonder, why well established companies like microsoft, apple etc. are not doing this.

[datums]

They are. http://goo.gl/RPgs2. It's not new.

[rbanffy]

The datacenters that provide services for Windows Phone 7 and Bing certainly don't need chillers. They barely need servers.

Badoom tsss